Despite retiring last May, Jeremy Strick (Cowell ’77, History of Art) is still keeping busy. He spent the last 15 years as the director of the Nasher Sculpture Center, and continued to do some work for them in June, until finally taking a vacation. But he still has personal projects to keep him busy in his newfound retirement, including writing and personal curating.
Strick describes getting into UC Santa Cruz as “a dream to me.” He applied to schools in the UC system but Santa Cruz was the only one he truly wanted. “At that point, Santa Cruz was very new and reputed to be experimental and innovative, and that’s something I wanted to be a part of,” he says. And fortunately he got in.
His time in undergrad set him up for many of the experiences he would have later in life. Particularly meeting his wife who was an undergraduate at the same time that he was. The two have been together for 50 years. The couple have two grown children: a daughter who is an antitrust litigator at the Department of Justice and a son who makes video games.
Along with his family, Strick credits the trajectory of his career to his time at UC Santa Cruz.”It gave me the ability to chart my own path, explore different areas, and come to my own conclusions with the guidance and inspiration of extraordinary teachers and also amazing friends,” he says.
Strick also got his first job thanks to a UCSC professor, Nan Rosenthal, who he credits with inspiring and pushing him throughout his college experience. Rosenthal had been hired as the curator at the National Gallery in Washington, and she invited Strick to be an assistant curator where he worked for four years.
Since the National Gallery, Strick has gone on to work at some of the most prestigious museums in the country including the Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. He came to the Nasher in 2009, and helped curate numerous exhibits in his time there.
Throughout his life, Strick has found his time at UC Santa Cruz to be influential from shaping his family to his career. He even stays in touch with many of his friends from college. Describing his overall experience at UC Santa Cruz Strick Says, “It personally could not have been any more important in my life.”