Two exhibitions of California art that consider complex ideas of cultural origins and legacy — from a sculptor’s deliberate choice of materials and creative process to collection and preservation of art for posterity — open in January at the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art at University of California, Davis. 

This week, Sahar Khoury: Weights & Measures (Jan. 7–June 20) — the Bay Area artist’s largest solo exhibition to date — builds on her 2023 exhibition, Sahar Khoury: Umm, at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Ohio, adding new works. Using ceramics, metal, papier-mâché and found objects, Khoury creates sculptures that integrate abstraction, personal and political symbols and sensitivity to site. 

Backstory: Digitizing the Museum Collection (Jan. 21–May 2) invites visitors to experience a working digitization laboratory, where signature works from UC Davis’ Fine Art Collection are on display. 

Sahar Khoury: Weights & Measures

The exhibition’s subtitle, Weights & Measures, evokes systems of value, physical and emotional burdens that people carry, and musical tempos. With a background in anthropology, Khoury’s work interrogates how we ascribe value to people and places. Her use of found and discarded objects invites us to consider what cultures cast aside, and what those choices reveal.

Weights & Measures comes at a moment of national recognition for Khoury, an Oakland-based artist who has lived in the Bay Area for nearly 30 years. Her work is on view concurrently at the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, through Jan. 26, and at Parker Gallery, Los Angeles, through Jan. 17. She is the recipient of the Joan Mitchell Fellowship (2025) and the Eureka fellowship (2026-2029) and will be a 2026 Resident Faculty Artist at the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture in Maine.

“By weaving personal, familial and global histories, Khoury speaks to the ways we both come together and come apart through singular and collective experiences such as mourning and grief, and shared cultural rituals of baking bread and listening to music,” said Kantor, who curated the exhibition. “Weights & Measures cements her as one of the most experimental and vital sculptors working in Northern California today.”

The emotional center of the exhibition is The Elephant in the Room, a welded metal structure hung with cast ceramic, iron and brass objects meant to evoke both the ruin of a clock tower and the marketplaces of North Africa and Southwest Asia, including Jordan, Palestine, Iran, Iraq and Lebanon. For Khoury, ruins are not simply architectural or archeological fragments. They are witnesses to people and places that are resisting their own extinction, carrying their memory and spirit across time and place. At the installation’s center, a spiral staircase rotates, recalling the tower’s original function of marking time. By playing with material hierarchies in her casts — for example, casting ducks in both gold and ceramic — Khoury imbues them with different societal values. 

Khoury earned her B.A. in anthropology from UC Santa Cruz in 1996 and her M.F.A. from UC Berkeley in 2013. She received the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art SECA Art Award in 2019. Her work has been exhibited at Oakland Museum of California; the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, in Bay Area Now 8 (2018), and CCA Wattis Institute for the Arts, San Francisco. Khoury is represented by Rebecca Camacho Presents, San Francisco; CANADA, New York; and Parker Gallery, Los Angeles.

Backstory: Digitizing the Museum Collection

Spanning two galleries, this exhibition focuses on the process of digitizing the Fine Arts Collection at UC Davis. The collection holds the work of pioneering artists who founded the university’s art department, generations of students who followed, and iconic artists whose influence shaped art history. But until now, this important collection has remained essentially inaccessible to the public.

Visitors will be able to glimpse key collection management and digitizing practices, including art works being researched, documented and photographed in preparation for digital access. Works by artists such as Ansel Adams, Robert Arneson, Joan Brown, Deborah Butterfield, Roy De Forest, Richard Diebenkorn, Kota Ezawa, Mike Henderson, Stephen Kaltenbach, Agnes Martin, Bruce Nauman, Roland Petersen, Jaune Quick-To-See Smith, Wayne Thiebaud, Andy Warhol and William T. Wiley will be on view throughout Backstory.

The Manetti Shrem Museum has partnered with UC Davis Library to create a model for open access and interdisciplinary collaboration. The public access launch is planned in conjunction with the museum's 10^th anniversary in fall 2026. The digitization project advances the museum’s mission to contribute to research and transformational art experiences.

“By digitizing the Fine Arts Collection and making it searchable online, the Manetti Shrem Museum extends its founding vision — to connect art, people and ideas — beyond its walls,” said Deputy Director Randy Roberts. “As the collection evolves from a campus resource to a global archive, it will be available to researchers, students, art lovers and those who may discover new ways of learning through finding art resources.”

Backstory: Digitizing the Museum Collection is developed by Roberts and Associate Curator for Collection Digitization Jez Flores-Garcia, with support from UC Davis students in the fall 2025 Exhibition Practicum course taught by Assistant Professor Alexandra Sofroniew. 

Visitor Information

Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art

254 Old Davis Road, Davis, 95616

Hours: 10 a.m.–5 p.m. Wednesday–Saturday

Admission is Free for All

Art Wide Open

The Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art is a contemporary art museum for today, committed to honoring the past and shaping the future while making art accessible and approachable to all. It builds on UC Davis’ legacy of exceptional teaching and practice of the arts to offer engaging experiences, exhibitions and educational programs that reflect and serve the community. One-third of the museum’s 30,000-square-foot space is devoted to instruction, including a lecture hall, classroom space and the drop-in Carol and Gerry Parker Art Studio. Opened in November 2016, the museum has earned numerous architectural honors, including being named one of the 25 Best Museum Buildings of the Past 100 Years by ARTnews.