Catalyzing an arts renaissance

Maria Manetti Shrem’s historic gift propels campus creativity to new heights

By Lizzy Tomei | November 1, 2024

If it weren’t for Maria Manetti Shrem’s generosity, Associate Professor of Art Beatriz Cortez may never have left Los Angeles to become an Aggie. The acclaimed multidisciplinary artist and scholar first spent time at UC Davis during a 2022 residency with the California Studio, a program that Manetti Shrem funded to connect artists of international distinction with the campus community.

Engaging with the UC Davis creative collective inspired Cortez in unexpected ways. When a faculty position opened up after her residency, she was quick to apply.

“Being here for the California Studio made me want to be part of this team: this group of artists who care so much about their students, and these students who are so knowledgeable, so talented, and so intensely passionate about their artmaking,” she said.

Now, Cortez has just wrapped up her first year as a faculty member on the heels of exhibiting her work at Italy’s 60th Venice Biennale—a prestigious, invitation-only honor that hadn’t been extended to a current UC Davis professor in more than 40 years.

The Maria Manetti Shrem Arts Renaissance

Over the last decade, UC Davis has pursued an ambitious vision to reenergize the campus arts and their global prominence. It found an equally visionary partner in international arts patron Maria Manetti Shrem, whose longtime support has helped the university chart an arts renaissance.

Manetti Shrem made history this year by committing more than $20 million to the Department of Art and Art History as well as the Department of Design. Her gift is the largest an individual has ever made to UC Davis arts or to the College of Letters and Science.

“With this incredible gift, Maria, our greatest champion, helps us build upon our storied history while securing our future as a leader in the creative arts,” said Estella Atekwana, dean of the College of Letters and Science.

In the arts, UC Davis is best known as the birthplace of the 1960s California Funk movement, a provocative style that flourished at a time when some of California’s most influential artists—including Wayne Thiebaud, Manuel Neri and Robert Arneson—were founding faculty members in the art department.

As the university celebrates 30 years of Arneson’s iconic “Egghead” sculptures dotting the campus, Manetti Shrem’s support is helping UC Davis reclaim that early spirit of experimentation for a new era of inclusive arts leadership.

“This is a transformative gift. Unprecedented, unparalleled,” observed Cortez. “I think that Maria Manetti Shrem is a visionary for defining her gift in specific ways that open our department to a really interesting future.”

Cortez continued, “This gift leaves us with a responsibility to build that future—in the best collective way that we can—so that we are able to enrich each other, to celebrate each other, to uplift each other. I am really excited about what is to come.”

Universitywide impact

Manetti Shrem and her husband Jan Shrem, both art lovers and enthusiastic collectors, gave $10 million to found the UC Davis Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, which opened in 2016. Since then, Manetti Shrem has expanded her philanthropic investments to other centers of campus creativity.

In 2023 she received the UC Davis Medal, the university’s highest honor, for her extraordinary contributions.

Manetti Shrem’s $20 million estate gift brings her total giving to UC Davis to over $43 million. It will establish eight endowments that sustain programs, students, faculty and visiting artists, catalyzing creative exchange and interdisciplinary innovation for generations to come.

On top of her promised estate investment, Manetti Shrem is funding these endowments immediately through contributions of about $800,000 per year.

“This gift to UC Davis brings me great joy, as education and the arts have profoundly impacted my life,” said Manetti Shrem, a resident of both San Francisco and her native city of Florence, Italy.

Her philanthropy directly benefits the university’s more than 40,000 undergraduate and graduate students. With about 25,000 student visits to the museum and 10,000 enrollments in art, art history or design classes every year, these numbers are now poised to grow even higher.

“I believe the arts should be accessible to all,” she continued. “We need the humanities—they nurture the soul and embody our shared dreams.”

Cutting-edge technology, world-leading design

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One-quarter of Manetti Shrem’s gift is dedicated to the Department of Design, where it will help grow UC Davis’ reputation as a world leader in sustainability. For example, using funds to acquire advanced technology could accelerate the development of new biological materials that greatly reduce waste and pollution in the clothing industry.

“In design, one of the key ways in which we can create more sustainable futures is through fashion,” said Design Department Chair Simon Sadler.

UC Davis design professors and students are already pushing boundaries in sustainable high-tech fashion and biodesign—collaborating across the disciplines to experiment with things like repurposing fish scales to create fake nails, and developing smart textiles that can change shape, color or properties in response to stimuli.

This year Associate Professor of Design Gozde Goncu-Berk, a Chancellor’s Fellow, worked with collaborators at the UK’s Royal College of Art to host the first global gathering of the Wearables Collective Symposium at UC Davis. The inaugural event brought together leading researchers, designers and industry professionals in wearable technologies and electronic textiles that improve health, well-being and sustainability.

Goncu-Berk is confident that Manetti Shrem’s generous support will take industry-leading work like hers to the next level.

“The consistent funding will empower us to delve deeper into our research,” she said. She added that sustained endowments will also support the department’s long-term planning, enhancing both research and educational programs. “Knowing that our students will have access to unparalleled opportunities for learning, growth, and professional development is incredibly fulfilling,” Goncu-Berk said.

Hands-on education at the Manetti Shrem Museum

Manetti Shrem shows boundless enthusiasm for the artists, faculty and students she supports. Back when Cortez was a visiting artist, Manetti Shrem traveled to her Los Angeles studio to learn firsthand about the artist’s methods for transforming steel into organic-looking sculptures.

Cortez remembers how excited Manetti Shrem was to learn all about her work. “I think she loves every part of the process of artmaking,” Cortez said.

Manetti Shrem believes that opportunities for creative exchange are essential for students of any discipline. “It’s crucial that as many students as possible are exposed to the arts as their primary inspiration to live life to the fullest and achieve their dreams,” Manetti Shrem said.

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With her husband, Manetti Shrem has gifted works to the Manetti Shrem Museum and SFMOMA—including pieces by Salvador Dalí, Vassily Kandinsky, Joan Miró and Francis Bacon—that formed the basis of Light into Density: Abstract Encounters 1920s-1960s, a current exhibition at the museum that is the first to be specially curated by students of art history and design.

Madeline Furtado, a museum intern and fourth-year double-major in design and art history with an emphasis in museum studies, is one of the students who helped curate and design Light into Density. She had a chance to visit Manetti Shrem’s home in San Francisco to preview one of the rarest works now on display.

Seeing a private collection up-close brought Furtado’s art history studies to life in unforgettable ways. Helping to shape an exhibition gave her new insights into how collectors choose pieces, the importance of provenance, and what it means to engage with art personally, on a daily basis. “I feel like it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and I’m very grateful for it,” she said.