The University of California, Davis celebrated the groundbreaking of the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art on Saturday, March 1. Named after Jan Shrem, founder of Napa Valley winery Clos Pegase, and his wife, Maria Manetti Shrem, the new space is dedicated to art education, and will exhibit art from California created by luminaries such as Wayne Thiebaud and William T. Wiley. The reception hosted by Clos Pegase, Neiman Marcus Walnut Creek and Boucheron began at the University’s Robert and Margrit Mondavi Center for Performing Arts where Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi wielded a shovel. Architects from San Francisco firm Bohlin Cywinski Jackson joined forces with New York-based design company Solid Objectives-Idenberg Lu (SO-IL) to reveal the museum’s grand canopy design featuring a 50,000-square-foot steel cover that appears to billow over a 29,000-square-foot series of interconnected indoor and outdoor spaces. And art students sculpted clay for donors while faculty presented future curatorial plans and an endowment for scholarships and future exhibitions. Wiley, also a Davis faculty member, installed a massive bronze gong first displayed at the United Nations in New York.

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