More construction on the UC Davis campus, but this one, ladies and gentlemen, is long awaited and very significant. This is the south side of the Vanderhoef Quad, a square on the side of campus I call “Trans-arboretum”, which includes the Buehler Alumni Centre, the Graduate School of Management, the UC Davis Welcome Center and Conference Center, and of course the massive Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts. Hey, I’m going there in April to see Belle and Sebastian. This is the gateway to campus and has been gradually sculpted since I first arrived in Davis. So what are they building, well this will soon be the Shrem Museum of Art. That is the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, to give it the full name. When the museum was announced it was very exciting news and the designs for the new building were modern and innovative. The final design, by Brooklyn-based architects “SO-IL” along with San Francisco based Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, was announced in 2013 and the ground-breaking ceremony took place last spring. You can read about the design here. I’m not joking – I am seriously excited about this museum. Davis is an artist’s city and UC Davis an artist’s campus (I should know eh, drawn it enough times) and this is going to be an amazing addition. I will be sketching its progress as the building goes up, but this is the first. I stood in the shade of the Mondavi Center (it is very sunny here in California right now, apologies to those buried in the snow everywhere else in America).

Visit their website at: http://shremmuseum.ucdavis.edu/index.html

“The beginning is the most important part of the work.” – Plato