Join us for the opening of the new UC Santa Cruz Institute of the Arts and Sciences Galleries. With three exhibitions on view, food trucks, and music, the entire community is invited to celebrate the launch of this new cultural center in the city of Santa Cruz.

The new galleries at 100 Panetta Avenue provide a home for the innovative and nationally renowned art and justice exhibitions and events which the Institute of the Arts and Sciences has become known for. Since its founding in 2015, the Institute has worked to further UC Santa Cruz’s historic commitment to social and racial justice, with programming engaging students and the public in artworks and creative projects about the urgent issues impacting our society, including incarceration, climate change, and inequality. 

Inaugural exhibitions include Seeing and Seen, an exhibition of the work of 2022 MacArthur Fellow, artist, and filmmaker Sky Hopinka presented in collaboration with the San José Museum of Art, and Degrees of Visibility/ Ashes Ashes by artist and activist Ashley Hunt. These exhibitions differently expose the troubling histories and current ramifications of prisons and are part of IAS’s ongoing project Visualizing Abolition, a Mellon Foundation-funded public scholarship initiative at UC Santa Cruz.