The UC Davis art department changed American art and brought recognition to California. This 1963 photograph shows, from left, artist and assistant professor Tio Giambruni, artist and professor Wayne Thiebaud, visiting professor Elaine De Kooning and department head Richard L. Nelson.
Collection of Richard L. Nelson Gallery & Fine Arts Collection
Artists’ influence on the world
Before the 1960s, New York reigned as the only serious art center in the country. Five innovative artists who came to teach at UC Davis brought recognition to California by collectively launching the influential “California funk” art movement. With irreverence and wit, Robert Arneson, Roy De Forest, Manuel Neri, Wayne Thiebaud and William T. Wiley challenged the pretensions of the East Coast art world, charted a new course for a generation of artists and catapulted the UC Davis art department to international prominence. Their variety in styles and media remains a hallmark of the department—from Thiebaud’s representational paintings of ice cream cones, cakes and San Francisco scenes to Arneson’s idiosyncratic ceramic beer bottles, toilets and the famous Eggheads that now dot the UC Davis campus and San Francisco waterfront. The experimental spirit that dominated the art department during this time of explosive growth lives on in the students of today.
