EVENT DETAILS

Learning by Doing at the Farm

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.

Sponsored by University of California Institute for Research in the Arts
Curated by Robbie Kett, UCI Anthropology Graduate Student, and Anna
Kryczka, UCI Visual Studies Graduate Student

Learning by Doing at the Farm will be on display in the Outreach
Gallery, Room 3100A, at the UCI Contemporary Arts Center from June 7th
to July 20th. The gallery will be open Tuesdays and Thursdays,
3pm-8pm. Join us for an opening reception and remarks June 7, 2012
5-8pm. Free and open to the public.

For more information:
Learning by Doing at the Farm or email ucifarm@gmail.com