Thursday, January 5, 2012

UC Davis receives $10 million dollars for new museum

 Maria Manetti Farrow, Jan Shrem, Chancellor Linda P. B. Katehi, Dean Jessie Ann Owens . Photo: Robert Durell.   

Jan Shem, proprietor of Clos Pegase winery in Napa Valley has just donated $10 dollars to UC Davis to help build a new museum.

The museum will serve as a teaching and cultural resource for the region and provide opportunities to share the university’s artistic legacy, enhance its fine arts collection, and create new partnerships and collaborations.

Slated for completion in 2015, the museum will be named for donor Jan Shrem and his friend and arts patron Maria Manetti Farrow.

Born in Colombia of Jewish-Lebanese heritage, Shrem grew up in Jerusalem and moved to the U.S. as a teenager. After studying at UCLA, he built a successful publishing business in Japan, studied enology at the University of Bordeaux and later created the 450-acre wine estate, Clos Pegase. Shrem is now a member of the Director’s Circle for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and serves on the board of the Family Winemakers of California.

“After our dear friend, Margrit Mondavi, introduced the idea of the new museum, we decided it would be an honor to join her in supporting this extraordinary university and in sharing its vision for the future,” Shrem said. “Our philosophy of giving rests on simple concepts: We believe that education and the arts should be accessible to all people. And we believe that a curious and open mind should be nurtured and supported. Fortunately, the project at UC Davis has introduced us to people who profoundly share this philosophy. It is with deepest pleasure that we are able to help bring this new museum to life.”

Shrem’s gift will be counted as part of The Campaign for UC Davis, a university wide initiative launched in 2006 to inspire 100,000 donors to contribute $1 billion in support of the university’s mission and vision.

To date, $749 million has been raised from 85,000 donors. The gift is one of the largest ever received for the arts at UC Davis, and is the largest gift received to date by the College of Letters and Science. It is the fourth largest cumulative gift from an individual donor to The Campaign for UC Davis, and the sixth largest gift from any donor to the campaign. 

http://www.examiner.com/museum-in-san-francisco/university-of-california-davis-receives-a-10-million-gift-for-a-new-art-museum

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