2022–2023 Year in Review Institute of the Arts and Sciences
Contents Director’s Message IAS Galleries Exhibitions Events and Performances Education Programs People Advocacy Council and Supporters
Director’s Message
we’ve expanded our pivotal role at UC Santa Cruz and beyond. Thank you for helping us make this possible. People are recognizing that the IAS is truly the only institution of its kind, with ground-breaking and risk-taking interdisciplinary exhibitions and programs placing the arts at the forefront of social transformation. Nowhere is this more evident than with Visualizing Abolition, our arts and education-based initiative about prisons, art, and justice developed in collaboration with Professor Gina Dent, for which we were honored to receive the UC Santa Cruz Chancellor’s 2023 Innovation Impact Award. Through Visualizing Abolition, and in partnerships with San José Museum of Art and Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History, our exhibitions have creatively engaged more than 40,000 people in the complex histories and experiences of incarceration. It has been a pleasure to see the IAS becoming a gathering place, with people coming together around these and other crucial issues through First Friday events, panel discussions, artist talks, performances, film programs, and more.
It’s hard to believe that it has been little more than six months since the Institute of the Arts and Sciences opened the doors to its new galleries in February 2023. The first climatecontrolled arts exhibition facility to serve the university, the IAS is a vibrant hub for our community and our students. And, with four exhibitions and nineteen events so far realized in our new space, I think it's safe to say we are already a cultural force at the university and in the region. I am extremely grateful to you for helping us get to this crucial milestone—your support and participation have been vital as
The support we give to artists, musicians, and others also distinguishes the IAS. With a newly established artist residency and commission program, we provide creative space and resources for work that offers unique and vital perspectives into today’s critical issues. In 20222023, it was thrilling to provide the financial and intellectual support to see four new, exemplary projects realized. For our multi-sited exhibition in winter 2023, Sky Hopinka: Seeing and Seen, the artist and filmmaker powerfully traversed the entanglements between the carceral and settler colonial history of the United States in a
new film, Sunflower Siege Engine, 2022. In spring, an immersive, new work by Oakland-based artist Sadie Barnette reanimated an alternate history of Black America, one shaped by statesanctioned terror but also by love and family. Carolina Caycedo and David de Rozas created a sculptural work about the connections between border politics and Indigenous dispossession from Texas to Santa Cruz County. And, for one special evening in June, Grammy-award winning jazz drummer Terri Lyne Carrington, Dianne Reeves, Nicholas Payton and other renowned musicians transformed our galleries through Music for Abolition, a program of original compositions providing the sonic landscape of liberation. With these and the other exhibitions and events that took place over the last months, I’m particularly proud that students at UC Santa Cruz have had increased opportunities to learn through the arts. Hundreds of students have visited our galleries, joined us for exhibition receptions, and participated in events. Twenty student interns have worked with us to shape our programming and welcome our guests. Eighteen classes from across the university
came to our exhibitions as part of their coursework in the Spring quarter. We held our second annual residential dissertation workshop, bringing graduate students from across the nation together for mentorship and peer support. And in April, we launched the Visualizing Abolition Studies (VAST) Certificate Program for undergraduate students, with almost two hundred students already taking associated classes. This is just the beginning. In the pages that follow, you’ll get a glimpse of how else the IAS has grown and flourished in the last year. You’ll see details about the dozens of talks, workshops, receptions, and symposia that brought us together. You’ll also see the people who are the makers—the artists, musicians, staff, postdoctoral fellows, students, faculty, donors, and other collaborators–who are together dreaming and creating the IAS. We are nothing without you, and I am grateful. Sincerely, Rachel Nelson Director and Chief Curator August 2023
IAS Galleries
The biggest news of the year was the opening of our off-campus galleries on the westside of Santa Cruz. The 15,000-square-foot building boasts climate-controlled galleries, a screening room, and event space, all designed to advance UC Santa Cruz’s commitment to the role of art and creative thinking in transforming society.
On February 3, 2023 hundreds of our campus colleagues, alumni, and friends gathered for a private opening celebration of the new building. The evening was spent enjoying the inaugural exhibitions by award-winning artists Sky Hopinka and Ashley Hunt and admiring the new adaptation to the architecturally-refined building, designed by Mark Primack, which now houses the IAS. Remarks by Chancellor Cindy Larive, Campus Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Lori Kletzer, Arts Dean Celine Parreñas Shimizu, Professor Jennifer González, Professor Gina Dent, and IAS Director Rachel Nelson offered testament to the long years and
hard work by past and current colleagues, as well as ambitious dreaming that has made the new space possible. Folks from throughout the region came to celebrate the public opening on February 5 and to experience the nationally significant art exhibitions, as well as music by SambaDá and food by The Real Taco. Our unique mission of bringing the community together through art and the pursuit of social justice was on full display, with friends from Barrios Unidos offering visitors powerful tours of their mobile display of a maximum prison cell and prison abolition activist organization Critical Resistance also providing resources. Over four hundred people joined the day-long celebration–a long awaited and joyful welcome into the community.
“The addition of these new galleries brings to fruition the latest advancement of the IAS and the university as conveners of artists, creators, and thought leaders advancing social and racial justice.” — Chancellor Cynthia Larive
“The new galleries are a gathering place for our community, with exhibitions and programming at the forefront of impactful interventions in art, social justice, and diversity, equity, and inclusion.” — Dean Celine Parreñas Shimizu, Arts Division
Exhibitions The IAS provides a platform for established and emerging artists engaging the most critical issues of our time with thematic shows, single artist exhibitions, and newly commissioned projects highlighting the transformational potential of the arts.
“The Writing On The Wall at the Davenport Jail is the most authentic iteration of the project, providing the spatial context of how people are held captive in carceral spaces, surrounded by their thoughts, fears, and freedom dreams. You cannot escape the intellect and imagination of the humans held in spaces like this.” —Matthew Wilson, TWOTW participant
IAS exhibitions took place throughout the region in the 2022/23 academic year. In fall, Baz Dreisinger and Hank Willis Thomas’s The Writing on the Wall (TWOTW) immersed viewers in the experiences of prisons quite literally, with the writings of people incarcerated wallpapered onto the walls, floors and ceilings of the historic Davenport Jail and Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. Jackie Sumell and Tim Young’s Solitary Garden, a public art and garden project about solitary confinement, continued to grow at UC Santa Cruz, while also at the Davenport Jail, Sumell’s Flowers for Incarcerated Mothers raised awareness of the impacts U.S. prisons have on families.
“Ashley Hunt’s work carefully and provocatively lays out the stakes of what it means to live in a landscape of incarceration. As the first exhibition for the new IAS Galleries, it grounds our space in the long history of abolitionist artistic and activist work around this defining issue.” — Luke A. Fidler, Program Manager, IAS
On view at the IAS galleries in the winter was a solo exhibition of works from Ashley Hunt powerfully charting the proliferation of jails, prisons, and detention centers across the United States. With photographs taken from publicly accessible viewpoints and a video installation, it also revealed how sites of punishment—and the more than two million people incarcerated across the nation—disappear from sight. Ashley Hunt: Degrees of Visibility/Ashes Ashes February 5, 2023–April 16, 2023
“I tell stories that are relevant to an Indigenous audience, unburdened by explanations to an audience unfamiliar with its context.” — Sky Hopinka
Sky Hopinka, a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation, poetically and powerfully connected the histories of Native American Residential Schools and Reservations to other carceral structures through Seeing and Seen, a multi-sited exhibition at the Institute of the Arts and Sciences and San José Museum of Art. With new and existing films, photographs, and poetry, the exhibition traced legacies of both colonial oppression and Native resistance, illuminating continuities between past and present. Sky Hopinka: Seeing and Seen Institute of the Arts and Sciences November 4, 2022 –July 9, 2023
San José Museum of Art February 5–April 16, 2023
“[Family Business] operates as a kind of ‘liberation living room’: a private space within a public institution that speaks to Black life in the US. Barnette works through family stories and archives, conveying the political through the personal.” —Natasha Boas, Hyperallergic
In spring, the celebrations continued with the opening of two new exhibitions. Oakland-based artist Sadie Barnette’s Family Business, a multisited exhibition at the Institute of the Arts and Sciences and San José Museum of Art, brought some color and sparkle to the region. A newly commissioned video, a selection of photographs, drawings, and sculptures, some bedazzled and playfully adorned with pink, tell a layered history of the Black experience in the United States. Sadie Barnette: Family Business Institute of the Arts and Sciences April 28–December 3, 2023
San José Museum of Art March 10–October 15, 2023
“[The Blessings of the Mystery] is a sweeping presentation of the cultural, economic and political forces that have shaped North American history.” —Wallace Baine, Lookout The deep entanglements of the past, present, and future are the subject of Carolina Caycedo and David de Rozas’ The Blessings of the Mystery. With multimedia works focusing on what the Carrizo/Comecrudo tribe calls Somi Se’k, a region including parts of Southwest Texas, Northern Mexico, and the Rio Grande Valley, the exhibition charts the struggles for territorial sovereignty, Indigenous rights against the encroachments of land privatization, dams, oil sites, and border walls. Carolina Caycedo and David de Rozas: The Blessings of the Mystery May 5–August 13, 2023
Exhibitions
Film Programs
Institute of the Arts and Sciences
Between Descendants and Ancestors: Indigenous Stories for a Future (Part One) Curated by John Jota Leaños
Sky Hopinka: Seeing and Seen February 5–April 16, 2023
Ashley Hunt: Degrees of Visibility/Ashes Ashes February 5–April 16, 2023
Carolina Caycedo and David de Rozas: The Blessings of the Mystery May 5–August 13, 2023
Sadie Barnette: Family Business April 28–December 3, 2023
San José Museum of Art Sky Hopinka: Seeing and Seen
November 4, 2022–July 9, 2023
Sadie Barnette: Family Business March 10–October 15, 2023
Santa CRuz Museum of Art & History Hank Willis Thomas & Dr. Baz Dreisinger: The Writing on the Wall March 10–July 9, 2023
Davenport Jail Hank Willis Thomas & Dr. Baz Dreisinger: The Writing on the Wall September 16, 2022–July 8, 2023
Jackie Sumell: Flowers for Incarcerated Mothers September 16, 2022–July 8, 2023
UCSC Campus Jackie Sumell & Tim Young: Solitary Garden November 5, 2019–Ongoing
February 5–March 5, 2023
Violent Exports Curated by Luke A. Fidler March 7–April 16, 2023
Over History Films by Carolina Caycedo and David de Rozas May 5–July 16, 2023
Between Descendants and Ancestors: Indigenous Stories for a Future (Part Two) Curated by John Jota Leaños July 18–August 13, 2023
Events and Performances Events and Performances at the IAS create community, provide insight and connection, and foster conversations. Our galleries are a gathering space for the university and the region, offering free artist talks, performances, panel discussion, community-outreach initiatives, and First Friday events.
In 2022/23, the IAS organized 19 public events in our new galleries and worked with collaborators on numerous others. A few highlights include: • End of Isolation Convening with Sarah Shroud and Guests Even before the galleries were open to the public, activists, poets, and performers working to end the use of solitary confinement at prisons, jails, and detention centers gathered at the IAS for three days of workshops and discussions about art, activism, and freedom. • The Teaching of the Hands: A Conversation with Carolina Caycedo, David de Rozas, Juan Mancias, and Christa Mancias Juan Mancias, chairperson of the Carrizo/ Comecrudo Tribe of Texas and Christa Mancias, tribal director, joined artists Carolina Caycedo and David de Rozas for a discussion about Indigenous perspectives and climate crisis in relation to the exhibition The Blessings of the Mystery. • Creating Art in/with Community: A Conversation with Josué Rojas and John Jota Leaños In collaboration with the Dolores Huerta Research Center for the Americas, artist and muralist Josué Rojas and Professor John Jota Leaños led a conversation about Rojas’ new mural project at the Casa Latina (home of the Huerta Center). • Crossing Borders: An Evening of Philosophical Discussions Co-organized with The Center for Public Philosophy, Crossing Borders was a dynamic evening of synchronic presentations and performances, led by poets, philosophers, scientists, and artists.
Another high point for the year was Music for Abolition on June 8, with outstanding performances by legendary jazz musicians Terri Lyne Carrington, Dianne Reeves, Sarah Elizabeth Charles, Camila Cortina Bello, Morgan Guerin, Nicole Mitchell, Nicholas Payton, Elena Pinderhughes, Matthew Stevens, James Gordon Williams, and Carl “Kokayi” Walker. Organized by Terri Lyne Carrington, an NEA Jazz Master and four-time GRAMMY® award-winning drummer, producer and educator, Music for Abolition featured original compositions reverberating with the shared struggle against prisons, policing, and racial violence.
“I had the good fortune to attend Music for Abolition at IAS. Carrington, a titan of contemporary jazz, was joined on stage by both luminaries and up-and-coming performers. Against the backdrop of Carolina Caycedo and David de Roza’s simultaneously ethereal and palpable The Blessings of the Mystery and Sadie Barnette’s quietly powerful Family Business, their electrifying performance resonated deeply. ” — Catherine Ramírez, Professor, Latin American & Latino Studies
“The IAS is a vibrant artistic space, educational center, and social lab, raising awareness about diverse issues that shape the quotidian lives of the often unseen and forgotten. In a time in the U.S. when books are being banned, women and LGBTQ hard-won rights are being attacked, and histories of marginalized people are being dropped from curriculums, IAS’s conscious and creative curation is a much needed and continued intervention.” — James Gordon Williams, Assistant Professor, Music
"The gatherings at the IAS have greatly added to life in Santa Cruz. The encounters and the mobilizing energy of each event and exhibition have provided a breath and an injection of energy, reminding me that art, in dialogue with other disciplines, can play a fundamental role in elaborating the way we see, feel, narrate, confront, and invent forms of living in the world." — Cláudio Bueno, Assistant Professor, Art
Events and Performances October 27: Artist Talk with Mia Rollow and Caleb Duarte (Art Department, UCSC) November 15–17: Workshop: End of Isolation
with Sarah Shroud and Guests January 31: Artist Talk with Ashley Hunt,
Nicole Marroquin, and Claire Pentecost (Online) February 5: Exhibition Opening: Ashley
May 5: Exhibition Openings: Sadie Barnette: Family Business and Carolina Caycedo and David de Rozas: The Blessings of the Mystery May 6: Artist Talk with Carolina Caycedo, David de Rozas, Juan Mancias, and Christa Mancias May 11: Artist Talk with Josué Rojas and John
Jota Leaños
Hunt: Degrees of Visibility/ Ashes Ashes and Sky Hopinka: Seeing and Seen
May 13: Performances and Discussions: Crossing Borders
March 4: Exhibition Tour: Ashley Hunt: Degrees of Visibility/ Ashes Ashes and Sky Hopinka: Seeing and Seen with Rachel Nelson
June 2: First Friday and Futurescapes: Projects from the Coha-Gunderson Student Collective
March 18: Artist Talk with Ashley Hunt and
Daniel “Nane” Alejandrez March 25: Art Walk: Looking at Lichen with
Laurie Palmer April 8: Exhibition Tour: Ashley Hunt: Degrees of Visibility/ Ashes Ashes and Sky Hopinka: Seeing and Seen with Luke A. Fidler April 11: Film Screening: Sky Hopinka, małni
—towards the ocean, towards the shore (Del Mar Theater)
June 8: Concert: Music for Abolition with Terri Lyne Carrington and Special Guests June 13: Exhibition Tour: Sadie Barnette: Family Business and Carolina Caycedo and David de Rozas: The Blessings of the Mystery with Luke A. Fidler July 7: First Friday July 7: Artist Talk with Dr. Baz Dreisinger, Devon Simmons, and Matthew Wilson (Museum of Art & History)
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
July 8: The Writing on the Wall Exhibition Tour with Dr. Baz Dreisinger, Devon Simmons, and Matthew Wilson (Davenport Jail)
April 14-15: Symposium: Visualizing Premodern
August 4: First Friday/Family Day
April 12: Artist Talk with Sky Hopinka and
Abolition April 21: Exhibition Tour: The Writing on the
Wall with Rachel Nelson & Luke A. Fidler (Museum of Art & History)
September 24: Music for Abolition with Terri Lyne Carrington, Angela Davis, and Gina Dent (Monterey Jazz Festival)
Education Programs
As academic disciplines and pedagogies continue to evolve, the IAS serves as a laboratory where students and our communities together learn and create new ways of meeting the broad challenges of the rapidly changing world. In 2022/23, our twenty paid undergraduate interns gained hands-on, once-in-a-lifetime experience, working with professional staff and others to prepare the new galleries for their public opening. From learning the environmental standards for art museums to creating visitor outreach materials and welcoming guests into our space, our interns are involved in every aspect of the new program. Hundreds of other students at UC Santa Cruz and throughout the region also benefited from our education programs through class visits and curatorial tours, the curriculum and classes developed through Visualizing Abolition Studies (our undergraduate certificate program), dissertation writing workshops, and more.
Our students and community also have opportunities to engage with artists and scholars through our residency and fellowship programs. Artists-in-Residence Mia Eve Rollow and Caleb Duarte held workshops with the Environmental Art and Social Practice MFA Program. Through Visualizing Abolition, two system-impacted artists, Frank Alejandrez and Reginald BoClair, also received fellowships and support to develop new artwork. In collaboration with University Library Special Collection, the Artist in the Archive graduate fellowship program, designed for MFA and PhD students to creatively engage with the university collections, was launched with Ontario Alexander as inaugural fellow.
“My time at the IAS has shown me the endless possibilities of an interdisciplinary career in the arts, made possible by the continuous support of the amazing friends, colleagues, and mentors I have found in this wonderful space." —Camila Alvarado ‘23
“Working at the IAS is uniquely rewarding: with the support of staff, the space has helped me start finding my place within an activist community and has also exposed me to social justice-seeking roles—an avenue of work which I hope to turn into a career. I consider myself lucky to have landed here and look forward to further opportunities to grow at the IAS.” — Alexandra Singer ‘24
“The IAS has provided critical support for Reasonable Doubts | Making an Exoneree, a two-quarter course sequence in which UCSC Film and Digital Media undergraduate students work in small teams with students at Georgetown University to re-investigate and document cases of wrongful conviction. The IAS not only provides flexible space for the class to meet on the third floor of its beautiful new facility, but through the Visualizing Abolition initiative, they also have offered funding and administrative support that allowed UCSC students to travel across the country to film and conduct field research for their cases. It would simply not be possible to do this work at UCSC without the support of the IAS.” — Sharon Daniel, Professor, Film and Digital Media
“Working at the IAS was the best college job I could have asked for. I got paid to learn valuable skills and meet amazing artists and academics!” — Matilda Krulder ‘23
People Staff
Paid Interns
Rachel Nelson, Director and Chief Curator Louise Leong, Head of Exhibitions Luke A. Fidler, Program Manager Tam Welch, Program Coordinator: Visitor Experience and Community Outreach M.K. Stockwell, Program Coordinator: Communications and Outreach
Camila Alvarado ‘23 Brenda Alvarez ‘24 Emily Annab ‘24 Ben Banuelos ‘24 Aja Bond ‘23 Island Gutierrez ‘25 Bea Juarez ‘23 Matthew Kim ‘23 Shelton Korges ‘23 Matilda Krulder ‘23 Atlas Martinez ‘23 Casey McHugh ‘24 Danny Moshayedi ‘25 Iggy Quibilan ‘24 Brianna Romero ‘23 Geneva Samuelson ‘25 Alexandra Singer ‘24 Kristina Singleton ‘23 Elijah Solow Ohashi ‘23 Emily Tran ‘25
Faculty Affiliates Dee Hibbert-Jones, Associate Dean of Research, Exhibition, and Engagement Gina Dent, Faculty Fellow, PI Visualizing Abolition Jennifer González, Faculty Fellow Ari Friedlaender, Faculty Fellow Althea Wasow, UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow Savannah Kilner, Postdoctoral Fellow, Visualizing Abolition
Advocacy Council and Supporters The Institute of the Arts and Sciences thanks our advocacy council and all of our supporters for your generosity and partnership. You enable our mission of education through the arts to thrive. For the steadfast support of UC Santa Cruz, the gifts and grants we receive to support initiatives and operations, and to our community partners, we are grateful! Advocacy Council Jon Carnero (Kresge, ‘94) Gina Dent Lauren Dickens Herman Gray (Grad Division, ’83) Jennifer González (Grad Division ’96) Erin O’Toole (Kresge, ’92) Jock Reynolds (Stevenson, '69) Keith Muscutt John Weber Randy Wedding Foundations and Funders Mellon Foundation National Endowment for the Arts The June Leaf and Robert Frank Foundation Ford Foundation University of California Humanities Research Institute
Arts Research Institute, UCSC Porter College, UCSC UC Santa Cruz Foundation Board Opportunity Fund PATRONS Betsy M. Andersen David Berger Eileen Blood-Golden Spencer L. Brownstone Thomas Burns Anne-Marie and Mark Cappellano Jon Carnero Jan and Michael Cloud Peter Coha and Vicki Nowark Bill Dickinson Ann Hatch and Paul Discoe Elliot Fruchtman and Alan Fong Jennifer González and Warren Sack James Gunderson and Valerie Boom Suzanne Hellmuth with Jock Reynolds Celeste and William Hughes Nancy and Peder Jones Wanda Kownacki George Kraw Kaitlyn Krieger Nion McEvoy Family Trust Joanna Miller Richard and Bettina Moss Keith Muscott Pamela Pierson
Pat and Rowland Rebele Alan Ritch Kathleen Rose Julia and Greg Schechter Jane Watkins John Weber and Leila Whittemore Celia and Randy Wedding Terri and Rusty Witek Partners San José Museum of Art Museum of Art & History Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos Prison + Neighborhood Art/ Education Project (PNAP) University Library Special Collections Mary Porter Sesnon Galleries Kresge College The Humanities Institute Arts Research Institute Friedlaender Lab
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