• Spring Exhibitions at the Institute of the Arts and Sciences

    Institute of the Arts and Sciences 100 Panetta Ave, Santa Cruz, United States

    Visit the IAS, UCSC’s premier art galleries, for our spring exhibitions. On view April 10–August 16, 2026 are three diverse and interdisciplinary shows: Libia Posada: Everything is Going Right, the first US solo exhibition by the Colombia-based artist and medical doctor; Gina Athena Ulysse: A Redwoods Rasanblaj, a site-specific and immersive exploration of the Haitian […]

  • Visualizing Abolition Screening Series: Beyond Access

    Visualizing Abolition
    Institute of the Arts and Sciences 100 Panetta Ave, Santa Cruz, United States

    On view in the IAS Screening Room is a selection of short films curated by Visualizing Abolition Visiting Faculty Fellow Dr. Pooja Rangan. Prisons deny and censor the access of those trapped inside them—to information, to intimacy, to community, to meaningful work, to nourishment of all kinds, and perhaps most cruelly, to care. This program […]

  • Drop-in Figure Drawing

    Drop-In Figure Drawing
    Elena Baskin Visual Arts Center Baskin Service Road, Santa Cruz, CA

    Drop-In Draw provides a live model and room monitor. There is no formal lesson and only dry media is allowed (no paints). — ADVISORIES – These events contain mature content […]

    FREE and open to the public.
  • Flow and Friction Symposium: Media Practices Across Global Asias

    Cowell Conference Room 257 Cowell-Stevenson Road, Santa Cruz, CA

    “Media Practices Across Global Asias,” a  graduate-student research cluster working across the History of Art and Visual Culture and Film and Digital Media departments, hosts their first symposium titled “Flow and Friction.” The day-long symposium is comprised of four panels with presenters from UC Santa Cruz and universities further afield in the U.S. and abroad. Three of the […]

    FREE and open to UCSC affiliates
  • Rasanblé/Rasanblaj: Call & Response

    Institute of the Arts and Sciences 100 Panetta Ave, Santa Cruz, United States

    Join us for an evening of call and response between Portsha Jefferson, dancer and artistic director of Rara Tou Limen, and artist-scholar Gina Athena Ulysse. Jefferson will offer a Haitian dance response to Ulysse’s art exhibition Redwoods Rasanblaj: Origins & Disentanglements and screen her short film IMAMOU: Hotô to Shore… Agbe | Agwe. Ulysse will read from […]

  • UCSC Concert Choir

    Music Center Recital Hall 400 McHenry Road, Santa Cruz, CA

    UCSC Concert Choir

    Free – $12
  • DMA Recital—Maisha Lani

    Music Center Recital Hall 400 McHenry Road, Santa Cruz, CA

    Graduate student Maisha Lani debuts new compositions composed over the course of two years in the D.M.A. Music Composition program at UC Santa Cruz. The pieces range in instrumentation and style: from a blues to a post-tonal work, consisting of vibraphone and stringed instruments, to afrobeat inspired compositions, to graphic scores and improvisation. Audiences are […]

    FREE and open to the public
  • VMCC Talk with Salar Mameni—Blood of Tulips

    Porter College D-Building, Santa Cruz, CA

    What counts as life in the midst of war, genocide, and planetary destruction? What is death and how do ideas around martyrdom and sacrifice contribute to our understanding of sacred ecologies? In this talk, Mameni engages these questions based on research for his second book project focusing on ecologies of war and martyrdom in the […]

    FREE and open to the public
  • Of Nature and the Cosmos—April in Santa Cruz

    Music Center Performance Studio 131 Santa Cruz, CA, United States

    Join acclaimed Iranian virtuosi Siamak Barghi (kamancheh, tombak), and Arya Tavallaei (santour); Stanford University’s celebrated guzheng master Hui You; and San Francisco’s Del Sol Quartet (“excavations of beauty from the elemental”—New York Times) for an intrepid concert that explores nature, the cosmos, the “deep acoustics” of musical harmony, and an exchange of imagination and inspiration among […]

    FREE and open to the public
  • Something held by poetry

    In this intimate workshop, UC Santa Cruz students, faculty, and staff are invited into conversation with poets Ronaldo V. Wilson and Terri Witek. Something held by poetry is programmed for Wilson’s multimedia exhibition, there are no words, but melodies, currently on view at the IAS. RSVP is required. Ronaldo V. Wilson is a poet, interdisciplinary artist, […]

  • Arts Dean’s Speaker Series

    Digital Arts Research Center 407 McHenry Rd, Santa Cruz, CA

    Save the date for the Arts Division Dean’s Speaker Series event. For UCSC affiliates only. Information to be announced.

    FREE and open to UCSC affilates
  • Making an Exoneree Showcase

    Digital Arts Research Center 407 McHenry Rd, Santa Cruz, CA

    Audiences are invited to Making an Exoneree, a reception and film screening featuring the premiere of five student-made short documentaries that reveal the facts—and falsehoods—of wrongful conviction cases from around the country. Over the Winter and Spring quarters, 15 UCSC undergraduate students in the Making an Exoneree course dedicated themselves to uncovering the truth about […]

    FREE and open to the public
  • Office Hours Under the Sea

    Institute of the Arts and Sciences 100 Panetta Ave, Santa Cruz, United States

    Join Ronaldo Wilson and special guests for a site-specific, endurance performance as part of there are no words, but melodies. The exhibition emerges at the intersections of Black poetics, performance, and visual art toshuttle between verbal and non-verbal forms of language, rendering the boundaries of identity and meaning slippery. Drop in and visit Wilson’s office […]

  • Arts Staff Live!

    Digital Arts Research Center 407 McHenry Rd, Santa Cruz, CA

    UCSC Arts Staff Live! 2

    FREE and open to the public
  • Chamber Music Concert with UCSC Music Ensembles —Percussion, Celtic, Classical Guitar, Horns, Central Asian, Experimental

    Music Center Recital Hall 400 McHenry Road, Santa Cruz, CA

    Audiences are invited to a free spring quarter chamber music concert featuring a variety of student ensembles. — ADMISSION – Attend in person at the Music Center Recital Hall at UC Santa Cruz – UCSC Affiliates only – Open seating (no ticket required). – Doors are scheduled to open 30 minutes prior to event start […]

    FREE
  • UCSC Jazz Combos

    Music Center Recital Hall 400 McHenry Road, Santa Cruz, CA

    UCSC Jazz Combos present a spring quarter concert

    Free – $12