The student-curated museum acts as a mobile art gallery with a community-‘driven’ purpose
By EMME DUNNING — features@theaggie.org
The UC Davis Unitrans system is notorious for turning heads as it does its rounds through town. From their iconic double-decker buses, their cherry red color and employing student drivers, Unitrans does anything but play by the rules.
This fall, Unitrans turned heads once again with a completely new project. Through a collaboration with ASUCD and Aggie Arts, Unitrans has revealed its new bus that is already gracing the streets of Davis — The Moo-vin’ Moo-seum. The Moo-vin’ Moo-seum, complete with a cow-themed pun, is a mobile art gallery showcasing the work of UC Davis students and community members alike.
The idea for the Moo-vin’ Moo-seum came from Jonah Messinger, a third-year food science major. As a Unitrans sales representative, Messinger and his friends noticed extra space where advertisements typically go and saw the opportunity to showcase something else entirely.
“Rather than sell ads, we decided that we wanted to put art inside the buses,” Messinger said.
The project sprouted from humble beginnings, starting with the Unitrans interior art project. The project enlisted community members and students to send in their art to adorn the inside of Unitrans buses in place of typical ad carts. The project was successful, and Messinger’s team began to set their sights on a larger project — the Moo-vin’ Moo-seum.
The completed Moo-vin’ Moo-seum is a fully functioning Unitrans bus with a twist. The outside of the bus has been wrapped in a colorful mural depicting iconic spots in the Davis and the UC Davis community, along with bubbly letters reading “Moo-vin’ Moo-seum” on one side and “ASUCD” on the other. The inside of the bus showcases art in place of advertisements, creating an immersive experience for riders.
The art on the inside of the bus was not created by one artist alone but instead through the collaboration of over 400 students and community members. At the recent Sunset Fest, as well as a Saturday at the Davis Farmers Market, Moo-vin’ Moo-seum curators invited attendees to contribute to a collaborative work of art with a theme centering around Davis. The result is a mural truly representative of the Davis community.
The Moo-vin’ Moo-seum has four overarching goals — to build community, support local artists, promote ASUCD and, finally, to maintain sustainability.
The sustainability goal is particularly important to the organization, which insists that it goes deeper than just environmental sustainability.
“We wanted to think of sustainability not just in environmental terms but in an economic and social model as well,” Messinger said. “We want this to be a sustainable project that doesn’t just end when I graduate or when someone else graduates, but something that really becomes central to Davis.”
Although Messinger played a major role in coming up with the idea for the Moo-vin’ Moo-seum, he asserted that the project was extremely collaborative.
“There’s a whole team of people behind the Moo-vin’ Moo-seum, it’s definitely not just me,” Messinger said.
Another key player in this team has been Mitchell Borges, the current director of marketing for ASUCD. Borges was approached by Messinger about the project and saw an opportunity to blend the goals of ASUCD and Unitrans to create the Moo-vin’ Moo-seum.
“Going into this year, ASUCD really wanted the focus to be reminding students and the community that our main goal here is support,” Borges said. “We wanted to be able to promote ASUCD and how we align with this vision.”
Borges also expressed that he enjoyed watching the community bond over this project, as well as seeing the ideas of his and others come to life.
“We ended up having a lot of students really excited to share their story through art, and now it’s riding around Davis and everyone gets to be a part of it,” Borges said.
Madison Seeman, a third-year design major at UC Davis, was also an integral part of bringing the Moo-vin’ Moo-seum to life. As the Aggie Arts chairperson, Seeman has been closely involved with art projects across campus. These projects have ranged from small-scale community crafts to large events like the Aggies in Wonderland craft and music fair, which took place this past spring. The Moo-vin’ Moo-seum was a natural next step for Seeman and Aggie Arts, who hope to overall bring the Davis community together through art.
For Seeman, the collaborative nature of the project has been one of the most impactful parts.
“One of my favorite things about this project is that it has been a multi-organizational collaboration,” Seeman said.
This collaboration occurred across departments throughout the university and involved input from Unitrans, Aggie Arts and ASUCD. Seeman also asserted that the project was not just a collaboration of student organizations, but rather of the community as a whole.
“We wanted to make sure the community wasn’t forgotten,” Seeman said.
In order to ensure this, organizers of the Moo-vin’ Moo-seum took special care to cater to the perspective of the community at each step of the process and, most importantly, included the community in the creation of the art itself. To keep the project community oriented, the Moo-vin’ Moo-seum will be holding an Open Curator Meeting on Nov. 19, which community members and students are encouraged to attend.
Although the Moo-vin’ Moo-seum has already hit the road, it is far from complete. The current exhibit inside will hopefully be the first of many, and all will include students or the community in some way. The museum is one example of many artistic initiatives to keep the Davis community involved, creating and collaborating for years to come.
Written by: Emme Dunning — features@theaggie.org
