Beginning in 1968, UCI was host to an experiment in intercultural exchange and artistic and social scientific learning through practice. It brought indigenous people from Guatemala, Mexico, and Samoa to an undeveloped plot on campus known as the Social Sciences Farm, a space for these visitors to demonstrate their crafts, as well as a laboratory for new methods in education and research. As faculty and students developed new theories for understanding human difference, the Farm also served as a gathering site for members of the sixties countercultural movement. Learning by Doing at the Farm, an exhibit of photographs and documents from UCI Special Collections, demonstrates the intimate proximity of “traditional” craft and countercultural communalism to the construction of the institutional structures of the new California university. The exhibit illuminates a forgotten history of UCI and Orange County: one of utopian experimentation, of ethnic and racial diversity, and of experimental scientific and artistic practice.

Learning by Doing at the Farm will be on display in the Outreach Gallery (3100A) at the UCI Contemporary Arts Center. The gallery will be open Tuesdays and Thursdays, 3pm-8pm from June 14th to July 26th.. The exhibition can also be seen by appointment. Please e-mail us at ucifarm@gmail.com to set one up.

PLEASE NOTE: Learning by Doing has been EXTENDED, and will be open for viewing through July 26th. 

Directions to the Contemporary Arts Center can be found here. The Outreach Gallery is in room 3100A on the third floor.

And for news about the exhibition research process, the opening reception, ongoing activities at the gallery, and other information, please consult the News link above.

Curated by Robbie Kett and Anna Kryczka

Made possible by a grant from the University of California Institute for
Research in the Arts. Part of UCI’s 50-to-50 Anniversary event.