UC Merced on Wednesday unveiled a striking monument to a university on the rise.
A crowd of students, faculty and staff gathered in the early evening’s long shadows at University Plaza to get their first look at Big Rufus, a 10-foot-long bronze vision of UC Merced’s bobcat mascot. The sculpture paws its way up three staggered concrete-and-steel pillars, gazing resolutely to the horizon.
A celebration of stories and a concert highlighting the history of San Joaquin Valley’s railroads are the opening acts of the 2024-25 UC Merced Arts season .
Merced LitFest and Train Station Trios reflect the season’s varied offerings. Gallery exhibitions, concerts, theater performances and a film festival are scheduled on and off campus through May 2025. The creators and their work provide a multilayered experience of the Valley’s people, culture and landscape.
More than 170 students have enrolled this fall for classes in UC Merced’s new environmental humanities major, a degree that will prepare them to be advocates and storytellers for the living world.
UC Merced Arts invites everyone to a free performance that serves up whimsy, interactive fun and an inspiring message with a big helping of … operatic singing.
Thirteen graduating students were honored by UC Merced’s School of Social Science, Humanities and Arts for outstanding academic careers.
It’s a pair of special birthdays for UC Merced’s two student-run journals for undergraduates. The Vernal Pool , which publishes creative stories, poems and images, turned 10 this academic year. Meanwhile, it’s the sweet 16th for the Undergraduate Research Journal , which provides an early taste of the lifeblood of graduate and post-grad research — peer-reviewed publication.
It is impossible to avoid — the real-life event that frames the play “26 Pebbles” is disturbing. Heartbreaking.
Which makes all the more remarkable the play’s uplifting message of human resilience and the ability to come together after an unspeakable tragedy — the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.
An exhibit curated by a UC Merced professor reintroduces the seven-decade career of an American artist of Japanese descent who defied systemic racism and created a body of artwork true to her unique vision, even as the mainstream arts community kept her at arm’s length.
There’s nothing small about this year’s Shakespeare in Yosemite production. It boasts the largest cast in the program’s seven-year history and, for the first time, features a full band to deliver the score and propel the musical numbers. The headcount for park staff in the cast is an all-time high.
“The stage will be very crowded for the curtain calls,” director Katie Brokaw said.
"Flora," the latest film by Yehuda Sharim, will have its world premiere later this spring at a festival in Philadelphia, according to the UC Merced global arts professor.
Sharim describes "Flora" as a collective memoir of post-teen daughters of immigrants who must teach themselves about love and tenderness in a world dominated by unnecessary suffering and pain. Filmed in a Mexican restaurant in downtown Merced, "Flora," blends elements of reality and fiction while telling the story of immigrants through music.
