The opening of the exhibit “Learning by Doing at the Farm” will take place on June 7, 5-8pm, at the UCI Contemporary Arts Center Outreach Gallery (Room 3100A) and will run from June 7th to July 20th. The gallery will be open Tuesdays and Thursdays, 3pm-8pm. The exhibit will include a wide variety of material from University Archives in the Special Collections and Archives Department of the UCI Libraries.

The exhibit documents an absolutely fascinating, little known part of early UCI history. From 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 of land on campus known as Social Sciences Farm, a space for those visitors to demonstrate their crafts, as well as a laboratory for new methods in education and research. The experimentation and creativity which occurred in the development of academic programs and curriculum on this campus in the 1960s, especially in the Social Sciences and the Arts, was inspiring and will be reflected in this exhibit. The curators have been working with a wide range of materials in University Archives, e.g. correspondence, memos, policy documents, photographs, film and video. They have brought together these sources in new and very creative ways.  This will be an outstanding exhibit, and we hope you will be able to attend or encourage others to do so.