Department of Art & Art History

The 2010 MFA Exhibition, provocatively titled by the artists themselves, presents the final degree work for our second-year class of graduate students. The first-years open a show on 7 June 2010 at the University Club; just behind them a new class of eight students, selected from a very large pool of the most talented college graduates in the country, readies itself to matriculate in the fall.

This cycle has been repeated now for some four decades, always culminating in the annual MFA Exhibition. The graduate program in Studio Art maintains a curriculum of diverse and cross-disciplinary study, emphasizing creative and independent studio practice and advanced intellectual inquiry. Studio Art at UC Davis enjoys an illustrious history—the confluence between 1959 and 1962, for example, of Robert Arneson, Roy De Forest, Manuel Neri, Wayne Thiebaud, and William T. Wiley. This exhibition catalogue, we believe, documents the continued flourishment of young artists and their mentors on the Davis campus.

The essays here introducing the work of each artist are by Renny Pritikin, director of the Nelson Gallery, to whom the students, faculty, and I express our ongoing collegial thanks. Professor Annabeth Rosen served as director of graduate studies for this class.

The catalogue design is by Rudy Garibay of the Arts Administrative Group, veteran designer for campus publications in Music and Theatre and more recently the California Lighting Technology Center at UCD.

I am especially pleased that the electronic version of the catalogue will represent our inaugural deposition to the University of California's eScholarship project at the California Digital Library. Visit www.escholarship.org/uc/aah.

Additionally we are very grateful to the entire staff of the Nelson Gallery: Renny Pritikin, director; Katrina Wong, assistant to the director and designer of the promotional materials; Robin Bernhard, collection manager; and Kyle Monhollen, senior preparator; to the staff of the Pence Gallery: Natalie Nelson, director; Eileen Hendren, office manager; to the musicians for Robert Machoian's work, led by Richard Chowenhill of the Department of Music; and, always, to the donors whose generosity to the Department of Art and Art History has resulted in the endowments that enable our program to attract and support artists of the caliber presented here: family of Robert Arneson, Marcia Cary, Freemon Gadberry, Richard and Fay Nelson, Mary Lou Osborne, Wayne Thiebaud and family, and Nettie Weber.

D. Kern Holoman, interim chair