Learn more about your campus museums

With the grand opening of the Manetti Shrem Museum, other on-campus museums may have been overlooked. Here’s a short list of other UC Davis museums, whose focuses range from insects to activism to design.

Bohart Museum

Many UC Davis students may not know about the unconventional Bohart Museum.

“People find us by accident,” said Lynn Kimsey, the Bohart Museum director. “Everybody in the Sacramento Valley area with a kid knows about us, and almost nobody on campus does. I can’t explain it. It’s hard to become well-known on campus.”

Insects may not be everyone’s favorite topic, but the Bohart Museum, UC Davis’ museum of entomology, might be able to change that. Researchers at the museum dedicate themselves to teaching people about the importance of insects in ecosystems.

Upon entering the facility, one will notice that it resembles more of a research platform than a typical museum setting — because that is exactly what it is.

“We are a research museum, meaning we have specimens that are collected all over the world by various people,” Kimsey said. “One thing that’s different about us is that this is probably the only insect collection in the world that invites the public into the collection.”

The museum contains about 7 to 8 million specimens of terrestrial arthropods that are in some part open to the public. Given the stigma surrounding insects, one of the museum’s primary goals is to educate people — especially youth — and serve the campus community.

“One of our real strong emphases here is to educate people — to show them in a very harmless and careful way exactly how important insects are, how [they can be] dangerous or not, how we can live with them and really can’t live without them,” Kimsey said.

The Bohart Museum not only displays an immense collection of pinned insects, but it also allows guests to interact with live ones as well.

“We have a petting zoo, that’s what we call it,” Kimsey said. “We have kids come here. We hold the animals out to them to make them feel comfortable.”

The insect petting zoo serves as a method of education for people who are afraid of insects, allowing them to feel more comfortable with them.

C.N. Gorman Museum

Another lesser-known campus museum is the C.N. Gorman Museum. Located in Hart Hall, it is entirely student-staffed and hosts quarterly exhibitions featuring contemporary indigenous art. With the recent protests of the Dakota Access Pipeline, the Gorman Museum is exhibiting pieces related to this issue.

“There’s 15 artists in this exhibit all addressing issues of indigenous protest and prayer and ongoing acts of resistance,” museum curator Veronica Passalacqua said. “The Dakota Access Pipeline is heavily featured and all of that is extremely recent and relevant. We have a range of artists. There’s three UC Davis faculty, students, alumni and indigenous artists in the show.”

The museum also serves as an educational and interactive platform for students interested in the exhibitions.

“We will be having some public events that will be announced soon on our website,” Passalacqua said. “In relation to this exhibit we will be having an academic panel to discuss some of the issues. Towards the end of the quarter we will have a student-led event that will [offer] screen printing and spoken word.”

Design Museum

With the arrival of the Manetti Shrem Museum this past fall, the UC Davis Department of Design, in partnership with the Design Museum in Cruess Hall, organized an exhibition revealing its painstaking design process.

“Everyone was so cooperative and generous in lending us things that are very beautiful and a little fragile,” said Mark Kessler, the Design Museum curator. “Although these materials will be sent back, I hope that the documentation of this exhibit serves as a long-term archive for this museum. Most of the buildings in UC Davis are like fortresses […] guarding against the elements. They’re precast concrete, very heavy and sometimes very ponderous.”

In contrast to other UC Davis buildings, the Manetti Shrem is more open to the atmosphere and the elements.

“This is the opposite of that. In this building, the grand canopy — which is a signature feature — embraces the summer sun and the winter rain,” Kessler said. “There’s really no wall or bounding facade that you have to penetrate to get into the building.”

The museum’s grand canopy also beautifully resembles UC Davis’ cultural values of friendliness, openness and growth, making it a work of art that can resonate with faculty, students and alumni for years to come.

“The grand canopy was inspired by the Central Valley landscape,” Kessler said. “If you look up at it, you can kind of recognize this kind of quilt that is similar to the quilt of separate plots of agriculture land. This generated a kind of metaphor surrounding the idea of cultivation. Just like in agriculture you cultivate crops, on campus you cultivate young minds.”

Tim McNeil, a professor in the Department of Design and director of the Design Museum, wants students to know one thing about design: it is not just art.

“Most people interpret is as more of an artistic field, but it’s actually a really interesting mixture of the arts, sciences and social sciences,” McNeil said. “If you look at a lot of innovative products, design is what’s making them successful. Design isn’t just about making it look nice, but it’s also about making it work really well.”

Written by: Becky Lee — arts@theaggie.org

Windbreakers, onesies and mismatched socks

This week’s Aggie Style Watch focuses on Ryan Brady, who, from mismatching socks to bold onesies, is always full of fashion surprises. Brady, a third-year statistics major, knows how to survive the storm with layers, but admits he’s not as confident in the shoe department.

ASW: What is your style inspiration?

Brady: Honest answer: I just see magazines around, like H&M and Urban Outfitters and base my style on what I like. The main person I get my inspiration from is Russell Westbrook, and he is not stylish, but he’s really funny. When I go shopping, I see something that’s pretty cheap and looks nice so I get it. Or when I’m shopping online and I see a good-looking jacket online and just pray it will look good on me. Sometimes I look on Reddit for male fashion advice but not as much as I should. But my biggest inspiration comes from the actor Steven Anthony Lawrence.

ASW: Where did you buy everything you’re wearing?

Brady: The jacket is from Macy’s, watch Nordstrom Rack, shoes Nordstrom, the left sock from Sock City Sacramento, the right sock from Nordstrom, and both the sweater and jeans are from H&M.

How did this past storm affect your style?

Brady: It didn’t, I was just soaked and miserable. Half of my shoes were dripping, and I don’t have any boots, so I should probably get a pair.

ASW: Do you have any style advice?

Brady: It’s all in the sweater vest. You put on the vest, and you just look stylish. Just wear the basics, it will always make you look better than everyone else.

ASW: What is your go-to outfit?

Brady: A windbreaker, a t-shirt or a sweater vest when it’s colder, nice pair of jeans or a onesie if we get weird.

Written by: CaraJoy Kleinrock — arts@theaggie.org

“The Shape of Things” explores representations of love

Love stories in plays can often verge on the melodramatic; it seems we all know the type — conflicting emotions personified in a climatic screaming match and an emotional reconciliation at the conclusion.

The Shape of Things, a contemporary play written by Neil LaBute coming to the UC Davis Theater Department, however, is a more accurate representation of modern love.

“It’s a relatable play with human interactions and social situations and moral dilemmas,” said Taylor Church, a third-year theater and dance major who plays the co-lead role of Adam. “It’s super relatable.”

Similarly, according to Melissa Cunha, a fifth-year dramatic arts and film studies double major, who plays the other lead role of Evelyn, the show is unique in that the UC Davis Theater Department rarely does “normal productions that involve similar situations that students go through.”

Even more relatable to the student body, The Shape of Things is the second performance in the Theater Department’s Second Season, which started this year. Productions in Second Season are entirely student-acted and student-produced.

“With Second Season, everything is really a learning basis,” said Gregory Holmes, director and fourth-year theater and dance major. “A lot of us have worked on shows but have never been in a head or leading position, so we don’t usually have this much creative control.”

Having a more active and leading role in putting on a production has been a learning experience for Holmes.

“This is my first experience directing, since I’m usually an actor,” Holmes said. “I learned about directing by watching other directors and reading a lot of books, but also by just doing it. I learned from a lot of mistakes. Communication is a big thing I had to learn […] as a director, you are involved with both sides of production — you have to also talk to the people in charge of costumes, the [public relations] and the production manager, to name a few. I also had to learn how to find boundaries when talking to the actors, since a lot of them are my friends and peers.”

Despite navigating a new dynamic as director, Holmes was discerning when choosing the actors of the four-person cast.

“[Neil LaBute’s] writing isn’t very sugar coated,” Holmes said. “The play is about changing in a relationship and how it affects people around them and how love makes you do anything, whether that is love for a person or a passion. I was looking for actors who could be casual and pull it off. A lot of the scenes are intimate with just two people on stage. It’s nothing like Shakespeare where there are people dying from sword battles — it’s a lot of moments of intimacy and honest moments of confrontation that don’t involve fist fights. These are moments of real relationship problems and I needed actors who could understand and recreate that.”

The complicated role of Adam needed an especially talented actor, according to Holmes.

“I see this play about a young man [Adam] who gets a little bit over his head when it comes to love,” Holmes said. “When someone is searching for something too long, and once they have it, they go a little too overboard. I think too much love can be dangerous.”

However, for Church, getting the part of Adam was out of the norm of characters he usually plays.

“I usually get roles that require me to be more of the ‘asshole’ type of character,” Church said. “My character in The Shape of Things is way different — he is this introverted and dorky guy, so it has been interesting trying to tune out all of my other experiences. I went into auditions thinking I would get the asshole role because [Holmes] knows that that’s what I usually do and can do it well. He wanted to challenge me to act outside of my usual range; he said he thought it would be good for me as an actor, and he thought that i had the skills to do it.”

Cunha experienced a similar adaptation in order to play her character Evelyn, even with some similarities between herself and the character

“I haven’t really done a contemporary play like this one before, where I play someone that is actually my age and is an artsy girl like myself, but Evelyn’s personality is completely different than me, though,” Cunha said. “She is a Pisces and I’m a Taurus. She would do anything for art and I would do anything for the people I care about. But […] I think that was one of the difficult things about portraying this role, is that Evelyn is my age and in a similar time period, and I can relate to her in so many physical ways, but it has been a lot harder to find things in common with her or ways to relate or justify her actions.”

Another difficulty has been the breaks from rehearsal due to winter holidays, as the cast was able to rehearse together during week 10 of Fall Quarter and then only a few times all together during winter break. Week one of Winter Quarter has been the first time since the end of Fall Quarter that all the cast has been together.

“For a lot of the time over break it was me, Melissa and Gregory when we were rehearsing,” Church said. “It was hard not having the whole cast here because we couldn’t string everything together. It’s only been a full week since we’ve had the full cast back together. It’s been a little rough because we’re getting back in the groove of things and we’re about to start tech rehearsal.”

Despite any temporary hitches in rehearsal, the dedication of the actors and the quality of the performances are expected to make a strong show.

“The actors are doing fantastic, especially the leads bringing life into these characters,” Holmes said. “They are both nervous about performing, and I’m a little nervous too about directing for the first time, but we’re so excited about performing.”

The Shape of Things will begin showing Jan. 19 in Wright Hall, and tickets can be purchased on the production’s website.

Written by: Caroline Rutten — arts@theaggie.org