The University of California, San Diego (UCSD) will open a 12,000-sq.-ft contemporary art space on its campus in spring 2027. Housed in the university’s new Triton Center, the Strauss Family Gallery will include four indoor exhibition spaces and an outdoor sculpture terrace. Free and open to the public, the Strauss will host exhibitions, commissions, artist residencies and public programmes that encourage collaboration between artists and UCSD researchers and scholars.
Jessica Berlanga Taylor, UCSD’s chief campus curator, tells The Art Newspaper that the university is aware of the challenges other San Diego cultural institutions are facing and believes investing in art and culture is essential. "The Strauss represents a long-term commitment that the university is making to contemporary art and sees it as an integral part of the university's intellectual and public life," she says.
In 2023, the local philanthropists Matthew and Iris Strauss gave more than 100 works form their art collection to UCSD. (Matthew, who made his money in real estate, died the following year.) Represented artists in the gift include Carrie Mae Weems, Fred Wilson, Zhang Huan and Sabine Moritz. A foyer gallery on the first floor of the Strauss will host many of these pieces.
The David and Claire Guggenheim Gallery will serve as the public entrance and a space for exhibitions, gatherings and an artist-in-residence programme focused on digital artists, while the two-story Gray Box will accommodate large-scale sculpture, moving-image installations and performances.
The 3,043-sq.-ft Black Box will be equipped for immersive video, sound, sculpture and performance; and the White Cube will provide a more conventional gallery setting for works from the Strauss Family Foundation, travelling exhibitions and collaborations with collections in San Diego and beyond.
Taylor calls the Strauss the first "ground-up museum" at UCSD. Pointing to existing spaces on campus like the Mandeville Art Gallery (open for nearly 60 years) and a black-box theatre in the music department, she says the Strauss will strive to be part of the landscape of both the campus and San Diego at large. But in contrast to UCSD’s existing arts and culture spaces, the Strauss will be more public-facing and play a different role—with commissions, curatorial research and exhibitions in collaboration with artists from across the globe.
UCSD’s Stuart Collection, which includes sculptures installed across campus, has already established a public art presence at the university. The Strauss will now give artists a dedicated space for exhibitions, commissions and research.
“We’re connecting art inside with art outside now with the Strauss and the Stuart Collection, but we also want to distinguish very clearly what Stuart is about and what the Strauss will achieve," Taylor says. "The Strauss is very much about perception and experience, but it’s also about expanding our ways of knowing and presenting different forms of knowledge that you wouldn’t necessarily encounter in the classroom."
Taylor's greater vision is to engage the community through what she calls “big-picture public programming” and student involvement. The Strauss plans to engage both established and emerging artists, particularly in the digital space, and support the development of their work.
"We're looking at how we can bring artistic inquiry into university teaching and research," Taylor says.
This could include incorporating exhibitions and artistic methodologies into existing courses, giving students opportunities to participate in curatorial research and creative projects, and developing collaborations across the university. Taylor points to potential partnerships with UCSD’s Qualcomm Institute, the Interdisciplinary Computing and the Arts programme, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the Goeddel Family Technology Sandbox as examples of the range of possibilities.
"We see the Strauss as more of a platform than a container for a collection," Taylor says. "We do have a collection, but our goal is to be a platform for research and critical inquiry—and for challenging assumptions."
