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.

"Learning by Doing at the Farm"
Curated by Robbie Kett, UCI Anthropology Graduate Student, and Anna Kryczka, UCI Visual Studies Graduate Student

June 7 - July 26, 2012
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 3:00-8:00 p.m.
UCI Contemporary Arts Center Outreach Gallery, Room 3100A

Opening reception June 7th, 5:00-8:00 p.m.

For further information, please visit http://sites.uci.edu/thefarm or contact Robbie Kett, anthropology graduate student, rkett@uci.edu.

Co-sponsored by UCI Libraries, School of Social Sciences, School of Humanities, Department of Anthropology and Center for Ethnography

- photo courtesty of UCI Libraries Special Collections and Archives