SF philanthropist Manetti Shrem gives historic sum to UC Davis for an ‘arts renaissance’
A San Francisco philanthropist will create the Maria Manetti Shrem Arts Renaissance program at UC Davis with a $20 million gift — the largest gift in the public university’s College of Letters and Sciences’ history. The sum will bring her total giving to UC Davis to more than $40 million.
Manetti Shrem, 83, has previously told the San Francisco Chronicle that she plans to give away as much of her and her husband’s fortune as possible while she is still alive. However, the $20 million gift to UC Davis will be made posthumously. She will immediately begin to fund eight endowments at Davis with annual gifts of $800,000. Of the endowments, three will establish new named faculty chairs in the College of Letters and Science. Among other things, her gift will also fund Art Studio fellowships for graduate students.
“I believe the arts should be accessible to all,” Manetti Shrem said in a statement from the university. “We need the humanities — they nurture the soul and embody our shared dreams.”
Davis has 38,000 students, and about 10,000 annual enrollments in art, art history or design classes.
Manetti Shrem and her husband, Jan Shrem, have a history of making large donations to the Davis school as part of their philanthropic portfolio. In 2011, their $11 million donation established the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art. UC Davis said that the museum sees 25,000 student visits each year.
The new gift will continue funding for the California Studio: Manetti Shrem Artist Residencies, through which artists come to campus, teaching classes and working with both undergraduate and graduate students. Visiting lectures will also be funded by the donation.
Much of Manetti Shrem’s $20 million will go toward the fine arts. But the philanthropist, who amassed her wealth in the fashion industry, will also direct funding to the Maria Manetti Shrem Institute for Sustainable Design, Fashion and Textile in the Department of Design.
California spent many years disinvesting from public arts education, leaving private donors to fill in the gaps. In December 2022, EdSource reported that in elementary, middle and high schools, only one in five public schools had a music or arts teacher who taught their subject full-time; in the same year, voters directed $1 billion in funding toward public school arts programs.
