UC SAN DIEGO PLANS TO SHUT DOWN UNIVERSITY ART GALLERY

The University of California, San Diego, will permanently close its University Art Gallery this summer, instead turning the space into a classroom, reports Jacky To for the UCSD Guardian. The news came from executive vice chancellor Suresh Subramani and arts and humanities dean Cristina Della Coletta, who invoked the demands placed on the university as the “undergraduate population has grown by almost 1,700” in 2014–15.

Not everyone is taking the news quietly: A group called the Collective Magpie—comprising artists and UCSD graduates Tae Hwang and MR Barnadas—is mounting what they deem a “shared gesture” at the gallery, including an X spray-painted across the gallery’s front door. They see the closure as “devaluing the arts and disavowing, disrupting, and obscuring its rich artistic legacy.”

Jack Greenstein, the chair of the visual arts department, said he had already started planning shows scheduled for next year when he first heard inklings of the news. “I had been planning and working with people putting together a series of shows for next year, which we were going to ask for permission to hold, and I was discouraged from asking for that permission,” Greenstein stated.

UCSD will soon be the only UC campus without an official art gallery.