Great places to cool off this weekend...

The Arts Blog: Weekend in your pocket

As students begin to return to campus, there's plenty of art, poetry and shows to enjoy for all. And Mondavi tickets go on sale for their new season. Read on. The Manetti Shrem Museum will be open Labor Day so it's a great place to cool off as the temperatures hit the double digits.  And it's free! Get your tickets NOW for Einstein! Read on...- Karen Nikos-Rose, Arts Blog editor

More shows added to the Mondavi season; tickets on sale next week

The Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts at UC Davis has added more shows to their 20th Anniversary season. Tickets on sale Friday, Sept. 9, 10 a.m. for Pink Martini with China Forbes, Tig Notaro and Los Lobos with Gaby Moreno.

The presale for Mondavi Center members and subscribers is Sept. 7, 10 a.m. The presale for UC Davis faculty, staff and students is Sept. 8, 10 a.m.

View the entire season here.

 

Ongoing at Manetti Shrem, Open All Weekend

‘Young, Gifted and Black’

Monday, Thursday & Friday: 11 a.m.– 6 p.m.

Saturday & Sunday: 10 a.m – 5 p.m.

The first public standalone exhibition curated from the renowned Lumpkin-Boccuzzi Family Collection explores the history and meaning of Blackness and is organized around four themes: dramatic use of color, reclamation of the color black, materiality (nontraditional materials) and an expanded idea of portraiture. “Young, Gifted and Black,” which opened July 28 and is on view through Dec. 19, is open for viewing the whole Labor Day weekend. Read more about the exhibition. Watch the Arts Blog for a review of the exhibit.

On Sept. 25, two new exhibitions showcasing Loie Hollowell and Roy De Forest  (see top photo in story) join “Young, Gifted and Black: The Lumpkin-Boccuzzi Family Collection of Contemporary Art.”

SFMOMA announces fall first Thursday programs; free for Bay Area

1 – 8 p.m. on the first Thursday of each month

SFMOMA invites residents of the nine Bay Area counties to experience seven floors of exhilarating art for free on the first Thursday of every month. First Thursdays, from 1 – 8 p.m. this fall, celebrate Diego Rivera’s America with live programs and special events, including screenings of the Emmy Award–winning documentary Diego Rivera: Moving a Masterpiece at 5:30 p.m.

Join SFMOMA on Sept. 1 for Art and Labor: Songs and Poetry in Response to Diego Rivera's America at 6 p.m. in front of Diego Rivera’s Pan American Unity mural. Performances by The Labor Heritage/ Rockin’ Solidarity Chorus and Bay Area poets Josiah Luis Alderete, Leticia Del Toro, Ananda Esteva and Tehmina Khan will fill the Roberts Family Gallery with song and spoken word.

 Tickets are free and reserving online is highly encouraged: tickets.sfmoma.org. Limit two adult tickets per reservation. Children 18 and younger always get into SFMOMA free. Tickets go online two weeks in advance. Qualifying counties: Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, and Sonoma.

Admission for Diego Rivera’s America is also free for Bay Area residents on First Thursdays but requires timed tickets and has limited capacity.

New Work: Toyin Ojih Odutola at SFMOMA starts this weekend

Saturday, Sept. 3 – Jan. 22, 2023

Best known for drawings that use distinctively layered mark-making to highlight topographies of skin and surface, Toyin Ojih Odutola is a storyteller who often presents her work in sprawling narrative cycles. For her New Work exhibition, Ojih Odutola takes inspiration from the speculative fiction of Octavia E. Butler and the poetry of Dionne Brand to explore a future haunted by the human-driven environmental changes that characterize this geological age of the Anthropocene. Titled Satellite, this body of work debuts twenty-one new pastel, charcoal, and graphite compositions in an immersive environment layered with the sights and sounds of everyday life in a mutated world of our own making. Set in the year 2050 in Eko — the traditional Yoruba name for today’s Lagos, Nigeria — Satellite invites us to explore the contours of African and other global futures and the new configurations of home, community, and knowledge that may emerge.

Purchase tickets here.

Coming up

Einstein! at UC Davis

Sept. 16, 7 – 8:30 p.m.

Einstein!, a one-person play that explores the physicist’s earlier years as he struggles to prove his theory of general relativity, will be presented by the University of California Observatories and hosted by the UC Davis Department of Physics and Astronomy. The Sept. 16 performance at the Main Theatre, Wright Hall, is presented in conjunction with the 100th anniversary of an astronomical observation that proved the theory.

UC Davis physics professor Steven Carlip will introduce the performance and participate in a post-show Q&A.

Written and performed by Jack Fry, the play is set in 1914 Berlin as Einstein’s work is being rejected by the scientific community. Along with this, he is shunned for his pacifist views as World War I starts, antisemitism is on the rise, and his personal life is in turmoil with his wife refusing to grant him a divorce and his young son fights for his affections — all leading to Einstein suffering a nervous breakdown.

In spite of the dark subject matter, Fry’s play is filled with humor. It also uses projected 3D graphics and animations that give the audience insight into Einstein’s mind.

Einstein! contains adult themes and situations.

See promotional video here.

Courtesy/Michael G. French

The performance begins at 7 p.m. Reserved tickets are available at $50 for adults and $20 for students. Tickets may be purchased at the UC Davis Ticket Office, located on the north side of Aggie Stadium, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays, by phone 530-752-2471 during the same hours, or online here.

Einstein! is supported by two departments in the UC Davis College of Letters and Science — Physics and Astronomy, and Theatre and Dance — and by the University of California Observatories, a multi-campus research unit supporting astronomy research and education across all UC campuses.

The Department of Theatre and Dance is part of the UC Davis College of Letters and Science.

Art Farm 15th Annual Exhibition

Sept. 8 – Oct. 20, opening reception Sept. 8, 5:30 p.m.

In its 15th year, YoloArts’ Art & Ag Project celebrates the landscape of Yolo County farms, and art created on farms. The Art Farm Exhibition features works of art cultivated during the 2022 season of artist visits to local farms and farmlands in Yolo County. This year marks a milestone for the Art & Ag Project with over 150 farms cultivated by artists to date.

This year’s exhibition opens to the public with a reception on Sept. 8 at The Barn Gallery in Woodland and includes the largest assembly of art in the exhibition’s history with over 125 works by 97 local and regional artists. This collection of original art includes paintings, photographs, mixed media, sculpture, and fiber art.

Artwork in the show was juried by Sacramento art photographer Kurt Fioshback, noted for his portraits of other artists and photographers. Son of photographer Glen Fishback, Kurt was exposed to art photography at an early age. He studied art at Sacramento City College, San Francisco Art Institute, Cornell University, and UC Davis where he received his Master of Fine Arts Degree studying with Robert Arneson, Roy DeForest, William Wiley, and Manuel Neri. Ceramic sculpture was the first medium that gained him high visibility in the art world. Since 1963 Kurt has been involved in many solo and group exhibitions including SFMOMA and Crocker Art Museum.

The Art Farm exhibition runs through Nov. 18 at The Barn Gallery. The Barn Gallery is located at 512 Gibson Road in Woodland, at the Gibson House and Property.

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