Exciting news! The College of Letters and Science commits to support California Dreaming! See updates section below.
Join us to support the CA Dreaming Faculty Exchange fund
Send UC Davis Faculty to Florence—and Bring the Global Conversation to UC Davis Students
California Dreaming asks how California’s histories, environments, and cultural identities are understood locally and globally. In March 2027, the exhibition will open at the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi in Florence before coming to the Manetti Shrem Museum at UC Davis that fall.
UC Davis faculty scholars Louis Warren, the W. Turrentine Jackson Distinguished Professor of Western U.S. History, and Natalia Duong, Assistant Professor of Asian American Studies and Science and Technology Studies, are helping shape the exhibition through catalogue scholarship, seminars, teaching, and programs. Their scholarship will reach Florence through the catalogue. With your support, they can be in the room when the exhibition’s first international conversations begin.
Gifts to our campaign provide general support for the California Dreaming Faculty Exchange, including our current priority of enabling Professors Warren and Duong to be in the room to exchange ideas directly in Florence with Italian curators and counterpart catalogue writers. Those conversations will be recorded and preserved, then brought home through public programs, teaching resources, and course integrations when the exhibition comes to UC Davis.
If UC Davis helped shape how you see the world—or if you believe art, history, and dialogue deepen our understanding of it—please give today. Every gift turns this journey into an exchange, bringing UC Davis expertise to Florence and carrying the ideas generated there home to our students.
The UC Davis College of Letters and Science has committed funding toward airfare, lodging, meals, and local transportation for Professors Louis Warren and Natalia Duong to participate in California Dreaming in Florence. We’re grateful for the recognition of how important this opportunity is for both scholars and the College.
The College’s support is provided through internal university funding, so it does not appear in the fundraising total shown on the campaign page. That total reflects Crowdfund gifts only.
With their travel costs covered, your gift helps carry the exchange beyond Florence. Campaign funds support documenting the conversations, preparing materials for the museum’s digital archive, and developing teaching and interpretive resources for when California Dreaming comes to UC Davis in fall 2027.
Reaching and building beyond our initial $3000 campaign goal will bring the ideas and perspectives exchanged in Florence into courses, gallery interpretation, and museum programs here at Davis.
Thank you to everyone who has already given or shared the campaign. Your support helps make this a lasting resource for students, researchers, and museum visitors.
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