Current Exhibitions
Coming in Fall 2026
Together Again, 1956-2026: Perspectives from UC Davis’ Fine Arts Collection
August 2026–ongoing
Featuring important new additions to the university’s Fine Arts Collection, Together Again inaugurates the Manetti Shrem Museum’s ongoing collection galleries. This exhibition highlighting the collection will be on long-term view, accompanied by temporary exhibitions each fall and winter.
The ongoing collection galleries trace a history of art forged from this place. By focusing on relations of many kinds, this presentation proposes that in order to understand an artwork in all its fullness, chance encounters and long-standing friendships often matter as much as formal affiliations. UC Davis legends such as Wayne Thiebaud, Deborah Butterfield and Bruce Nauman are exhibited alongside important regional voices that were once overlooked, and the exhibition extends to the artists shaping Northern California today, including Sadie Barnette, Woody De Othello, Kota Ezawa and Ruby Neri.
Together Again builds bridges between who we were and who we are becoming at UC Davis, and affirms the Manetti Shrem Museum as home to the complex story of Northern California art — rich in legacy and always in the process of becoming.
Images, left to right: Manuel Neri, Prietas Series III, 1993. Plaster, dry pigment/water, steel, wood and Styrofoam core, 58 3/4 x 13 1/2 x 17 1/4 in. The Fine Arts Collection, Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, University of California, Davis. Gift of the Wayne Thiebaud Foundation.
Ruby Neri, Woman Reclining in Landscape, 2023. Glazed ceramic, 44 1/2 x 22 x 19 in. The Fine Arts Collection, Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, University of California, Davis. Museum Purchase provided by the Maria Manetti Shrem Acquisition Fund. Courtesy of David Kordansky Gallery.
Woody De Othello: coming forth by day
August 12–Dec. 5, 2026
This solo exhibition, originated by Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), features a new series of works by the Oakland artist that explore the primordial relationship between body, earth and spirit. Othello honors an important Northern California lineage of ceramic artists and expands that tradition by drawing on knowledge and philosophies from around the world through a decolonial lens. Using material experimentation and sculptural gesture, the exhibition considers how objects carry history, absorb meaning and serve as vessels for both spiritual and emotional experience. The exhibition features a new bronze sculpture created specifically for UC Davis. The Manetti Shrem Museum is the only California venue for coming forth by day.
Woody De Othello: coming forth by day is organized by Pérez Art Museum Miami Curator Jennifer Inacio, with the support of Pérez Art Museum Miami Curatorial Assistant Fabiana A. Sotillo.
The Manetti Shrem Museum presentation is organized by Susie Kantor, associate curator and exhibition department head.
Image: Installation view: Woody De Othello: coming forth by day, Pérez Art Museum Miami, 2025–26. Photo: Oriol Tarridas
Out of Line: Art at the Edge
August 26–December 5, 2026
What happens when the artist’s studio spills out into the world? And when the world necessarily makes its way into the studio? In the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s, as political and cultural upheavals reverberated across the country, artists at UC Davis navigated these questions. Bruce Nauman (M.A. ’66) taped a square on the ground of his studio and filmed himself walking around the perimeter during the winter of 1967-68. This exhibition takes his square as a formal provocation to investigate the boundaries of the artist studio, specifically drawing on Nauman’s deployment of the perimeter as a site of activity. Mike Henderson, Malaquías Montoya, Bruce Nauman, Nancy Rubins, Dorothy Wiley and the student artists of UC Davis’ Third World Forum engage with film, print and performance — cheap, accessible mediums that allowed for experimentation, iteration and easy dissemination. Through these frameworks, Out of Line challenges the arbitrary line that declares certain practices “artistic” and others “political.”
Curated by Ginny Duncan, guest curator, and Grace Xiao, curatorial assistant.
Image: Bruce Nauman, Dance or Exercise on the Perimeter of a Square (Square Dance), 1967–68. Black-and-white video with sound, transferred from 16 mm film, 8:24 min. Courtesy of Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York. © 2026 Bruce Nauman / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Coming in Winter 2027
Kota Ezawa: Long Story Short
January–May 2027
Kota Ezawa is an Oakland-based artist who visually transforms imagery mined from news media, photography, film, popular culture and the history of art. The artist’s first career survey, this exhibition spans 20 years of art making across video, projection, CRT monitors, slide projectors, 16mm film and lightboxes, as well as public art. Ezawa will create a new animation for the exhibition: Acts of Painting, which draws from biographical films about painters that show artists working in the studio. Bringing together Ezawa’s signature watercolor and digital animations in one work, it will be his most ambitious project to date. This survey serves as the Manetti Shrem Museum’s signature exhibition for the inaugural Further Triennial, a region-wide celebration of art across Northern California.
Curated by Susie Kantor, associate curator and exhibition department head
Image: Kota Ezawa, Vector drawing based on scene from Jo no mai (1984), directed by Sadao Nakajima, 2025. Courtesy of the artist.
ALSO ON VIEW: This Photograph Is My Proof
April–August 2026
Since the medium’s beginnings, photography has been used as documentary evidence. Whether capturing the perfect cloud passing by or a light bulb that has since burned out, the camera has the unique ability to record fleeting moments of time. This installation of photographs and photo-based works from the museum’s Fine Arts Collection considers — and troubles — photography’s perceived dependability. The works on view invite us to experience photography as a medium that both emerges from and can defy the limitations of its documentary function.
On view in the Collections Classroom during open public hours when classes are not in session
Curated by Grace Xiao, curatorial assistant
Image: Diane Althoff, Untitled #3, 2005. Photogram, 11 x 14 in. Fine Arts Collection, Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art. Gift of Foster Goldstrom. Photo owned by the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art. © Muzi Li Rowe
Coming in Fall 2026
The Gift of Fashion: From the Maria Manetti Shrem Haute Couture Collection
October 14, 2026–January 31, 2027
More details coming soon.