Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, Art museum at University of California, Davis, United States
The Manetti Shrem Museum of Art opened on November 13, 2016, on the UC Davis campus. Brooklyn firm SO-IL, with Florian Idenburg and Jing Liu, partnered with Bohlin Cywinski Jackson. A lobby with lightly polished concrete floors is lined with floor-to-ceiling glass; galleries of varying sizes and heights sit under an aluminum mesh ceiling. The Grand Canopy, a perforated aluminum and steel roof of swooping curves, surrounds the building, its geometry drawn from the surrounding farm fields.
The museum opened on November 13, 2016, realizing a dedicated art museum the UC Davis art faculty had discussed for nearly 60 years. Margrit Mondavi gave an initial $2 million, and Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem donated $10 million of the $30 million budget. The architects were Florian Idenburg and Jing Liu of SO-IL with Bohlin Cywinski Jackson.
The collection of nearly 6,000 objects centres on artists tied to UC Davis, among them Bruce Nauman, a 1966 MFA graduate, and Wayne Thiebaud, who gave 72 of his own works and 300 by other artists. Faculty recruited by Richard L. Nelson in the early 1960s, including Robert Arneson and William T. Wiley, shaped the Funk art movement, and critic Hilton Kramer's 1981 label of "defiant provincialism" was later adopted by the artists themselves.
The museum sits at the campus gateway, with classrooms, a student studio and offices near the entrance and the galleries to the right of the lobby. The Grand Canopy shelters outdoor ground around the building, so indoor and outdoor areas can be visited in one stop.
The Grand Canopy was inspired by the geometry of the farm fields surrounding Davis. In 2022 ARTnews ranked the museum building 24th among the 25 best museum buildings of the past 100 years.
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