A graduate of UCSC in 1969, with a BA in Psychology, Jock is another Pioneer alum. Jock Reynolds is both a visual artist and the Henry J. Heinz II Director of the Yale Art Gallery, America’s oldest university teaching museum. After graduating from UCSC he received an M.F.A. in sculpture at UC Davis and then went on to teach for a decade at San Francisco State University, directing the graduate program in SFSU’s Center for Experimental and Interdisciplinary Arts. He also exhibited his art widely and helped found 80 Langton Street, one of San Francisco’s premier alternative artists’ spaces.
Reynolds and his artist wife Suzanne Hellmuth then moved east to become artists-in-residence at MIT, and Reynolds went on to direct the Washington Project for the Arts in the nation’s capital and the Addison Gallery of American Art at Phillips Academy, Andover. He assumed his current position at Yale in 1998, where he is now overseeing a major expansion of the art gallery’s facilities, staff, collections, and educational programs, while also continuing to produce numerous exhibitions and publications.
A member of UCSC’s Pioneer Class, Reynolds has an important place in campus history. As captain of the soccer and rugby teams, he nicknamed the ruggers “The Slugs,” a name later adopted for UCSC’s famous mascot. Reynolds says he remains devoted to the many UCSC professors who taught him so well as an undergraduate.
In 2010 Jock and fellow Arts Advisory Board member Peder Jones donated $50,000 to establish the UC Santa Cruz Pioneer Faculty Endowed Fund--A Legacy for the Future of the Arts. The fund gives alumni the opportunity to honor those individual Arts professors who were particularly important to them in their undergraduate years. Yields from the fund will be used to directly support undergraduate education and mentoring in the Arts Division at UCSC.