2025 Day of Giving

Discover, experience, and be inspired by all the de Saisset Museum offers!

Arts and culture play a vital role in the intellectual and creative lives of Santa Clara University students and our diverse publics. Director Ciara Ennis’ vision reimagines the de Saisset as a Museum in Progress that responds to changing ideas, contexts, and challenges that shape our world. This vision is reflected in the exhibition program comprising a cycle of contemporary exhibitions, an encyclopedic collection, the permanent ongoing exhibition California Stories, and a new Project Room series. While each aspect has a unique identity and function, the four strands are interconnected and considered holistically through an interdisciplinary and transtemporal lens.

This academic year, the de Saisset presented contemporary exhibitions Julia-Haft Candell: The Infinite Library, Maya Gurantz: The Plague Archives, and the inaugural Project Room installation Joanna Keane Lopez: Thrice Layered. Additionally, the Museum launched its new Faculty-Driven Exhibitions initiative and the Flat Files of Curiosity series. 

On this Day of Giving, contributions to our Discretionary Fund will support our exciting fall 2025 exhibition Californiania featuring the work of Monica Rodriguez. Focusing on the history of the Alta California mission period (1769-1832) Rodriguez’s installation will act as a continuation of her exploration into the history of California’s colonization period. Looking at the visual representations of the California Missions, the installation will contain maps, missionary travel guides, surveys and site plans from the Santa Clara University Library’s Archives and Special Collections. The installation also includes replicas of the twenty-one mission-era bells cast in adobe to reflect building materials of mission complexes. Installed upside down, they will be repurposed as jardinières and used to grow native plants indigenous to California.

In addition to donating to our Discretionary fund, you can also contribute to the California History Fund, which will enable us to continue expanding the California Stories exhibition and its related resources for SCU students and the greater community, including our Docent Program. Your contributions to the Inouye Fund help support future temporary exhibitions and your gifts to the de Saisset Museum Endowment will help us build capacity. 

Your financial support of the de Saisset Museum on this Day of Giving ensures we can continue presenting dynamic, thought-provoking exhibitions and educational programs, as well as deepening connections with our collection of nearly 12,000 objects of art & history.