Wayne Thiebaud Influencer: A New Generation

The profound influence of Wayne Thiebaud on a new generation of artists is front and center in this celebration of the longtime UC Davis art professor’s centennial. Pairings explore how Thiebaud forecast the future of painting through his personal journey to find meaning and reinvention in the medium’s history in ways that are both current and timeless. Works by contemporary artists who have been inspired by Thiebaud as a fellow painter as well as those of former students reveal unexpected connections and sources of inspiration.
Curators: Rachel Teagle and Susie Kantor
An exhibition featuring
Andrea Bowers, Julie Bozzi (’74, M.F.A. ’76), Christopher Brown (M.F.A. ’76), Robert Colescott, Gene Cooper, Richard Crozier (M.F.A. ’74), April Glory Funcke (’87, M.F.A. ’89), Fredric Hope, Alex Israel, Grace Munakata (’80, M.F.A. ’85), Bruce Nauman (’66 M.A.,), Jason Stopa, Vonn Cummings Sumner (’98, M.F.A. ’00), Ann Harrold Taylor (M.F.A. ’85), Michael Tompkins (’81, M.F.A. ’83), Clay Vorhes, Patricia Wall (’72), Jonas Wood and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye
On view winter–June 13, 2021
Check back here for the latest opening information and visit our Exhibition in Progress website to meet the artists and go behind the scenes at the museum.
Working Proof: Wayne Thiebaud as Printmaker

Although Wayne Thiebaud is better known as a painter, he has also been a prolific printmaker, working in print for most of his career and producing over 200 designs. Drawn from the university’s Fine Arts Collection, this exhibition features numerous printing “proofs,” many worked by hand, that were created as part of the printmaking process. Shown adjacent to Wayne Thiebaud Influencer: A New Generation, these works underscore the importance of printmaking in Thiebaud’s artistic practice, as well as his dedication to donating works to the university that can function as teaching tools.
Curator: Quintana Heathman
On view winter–June 13, 2021
Check back here for the latest opening information.
Arnold Joseph Kemp:
I would survive. I could survive. I should survive.

The exhibition’s title, taken from a snapshot of a note in the artist’s studio, references interdisciplinary artist Arnold J. Kemp’s unflinching commitment to a politics embedded within a language of abstraction. His work asks us to consider the sensorial gestures that form the self and a people, the personal and the political, the historical and the present. Kemp stages encounters that invite the viewer into the artist’s aesthetic considerations of himself and the world that makes him. It is within this space that we are able to join him in considering how we are made and how we make ourselves.
Guest Curator: Sampada Aranke (Ph.D. ’13)
On view winter–April 25, 2021
Check back here for the latest opening information.