UCSD - University of California - San Diego

09/17/2026 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 09/17/2026 08:18

Celebrating 25 Years of READ/WRITE/THINK/DREAM

Published Date

September 17, 2026

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This summer Ernesto Martinez '03 returned to San Diego with his mother, father, young daughter and older brother. They arrived at the entrance to Geisel Library, the site of John Baldessari's "READ/WRITE/THINK/ DREAM." He paused to reflect on his photo and the other students imprinted on the glass. Every image, captured and frozen in time, is a life that kept moving.

It was 1994 when internationally renowned conceptual artist John Baldessari first returned to UC San Diego - where he was once a beloved faculty member - to consider a public art piece for the Stuart Collection. He took inspiration from Lorenzo Ghiberti's 15th-century "Gates of Paradise" in Florence, Italy, which featured moral lessons in high relief on bronze doors. Baldessari wanted something similar for the university, but on his terms: an entry to campus featuring questions rather than answers and students rather than saints.

While there was no grand entrance to UC San Diego, there was Geisel Library, designed by William Pereira, whose doorstep was crossed by the most people on campus. The project concept evolved, but the inspiration for the doors - with students at the heart - remained true.

© 2001-2026 John Baldessari Family Foundation Courtesy Estate of John Baldessari; Sprüth Magers Photo by Erik Jepsen/UC San Diego

In July 2001, "READ/WRITE/THINK/DREAM" was unveiled. Eight 10-foot glass panels comprise the entrance, featuring photographic images of UC San Diego students - each appearing to stand atop rows of books selected by the librarians. In the corners, a computer monitor and a television set with knobs. The sliding doors are bathed in primary colors, red, yellow and blue. Above the doors, Baldessari's four words read almost like a benediction: Read. Write. Think. Dream.

"As I looked at the other pieces in the Stuart Collection, I noticed that none of them dealt with students," Baldessari told the UC San Diego Guardian in July 2001. "Having taught all my life, it seemed to me that students should be prioritized. A university shouldn't be for professors. Professors should be for students."

"Baldessari takes the basic instructions of education, READ, WRITE, THINK, and then disrupts the sequence with DREAM," says Jess Berlanga Taylor, chief campus curator and executive director of the Stuart Collection. "That last word matters because universities, like all institutions, are good at creating structures, expectations, and ways of measuring. Dreaming sits outside of that. It can't be prescribed or controlled. With students quite literally holding up the institution, Baldessari reminds us that education should leave room for what may exceed the institution, for curiosity, imagination, dissent, and ideas that lead somewhere no one planned. That is often where true discovery begins."

Here are a few of the stories from the students of "READ/WRITE/THINK/ DREAM."

Ernesto Martinez '03 almost didn't go to the photoshoot.

His friends Denise Pacheco '03, then an intern at the Cross Cultural Center, and Yesiga Lopez Page '02 found out that an artist was looking for students to photograph for something at the library. Martinez wasn't interested. But his friends were persistent. They went through his closet and chose jeans and a plaid shirt for him. The artist wanted simple, clean and timeless.

Pacheco arrived at the photoshoot with a different idea. She wore a jacket layered deliberately over a Zapatista T-shirt, a symbol of an Indigenous freedom-fighting movement. She wore a bandana and jean shorts.

"I wasn't gonna be obstinate," said Pacheco, "but I was not really gonna fully play along either."

She was photographed seated, from the side. Her shirt is in the piece - but only she knows what it says.

When Martinez reached the front of the line, the photographer shot him from every angle: front, side, profile. He signed a waiver and went home. Weeks later, while away at a summer program in Berkeley, texts from friends started arriving. His photo was part of the art installation at the library.

"I was like, whoa. That is a big picture," he says.

Martinez grew up in Imperial County. His grandfather had been part of the Bracero program, a temporary guest worker initiative that legally brought migrant workers from Mexico to work in the U.S. Martinez's father worked as a migrant farm laborer in Central California. Martinez arrived at UC San Diego in 1998, on the heels of California Prop 209, which banned the use of affirmative action, or the consideration of race, sex or ethnicity in public education, employment or contracting. For him, his photo in "READ/WRITE/THINK/ DREAM" is about representation.

Ernesto Martinez '03, returned to campus this summer to share his experience as one of the student images in John Baldessari's READ/WRITE/THINK/DREAM. Photo by Daniel Orren/UC San Diego

"Having our pictures up there matters," he says. "To show that people who looked like us belonged here."

Martinez graduated from Warren College with a double major in economics and ethnic studies and went on to earn a PhD in cultural anthropology from Harvard. Today he works in Los Angeles as a market research strategist.

"My dad is more proud of me being up there than of me going to Harvard for my PhD," he shares with a laugh.

Pacheco went on to earn both a master's and PhD from UCLA, where she now serves as senior director of Alumni Diversity Programs and Initiatives. She's never made a special trip to see her image on the library. But when asked what "READ/WRITE/THINK/DREAM" means to her, she pauses and says, "Those things are fundamental to what it means to be a student, to be a lifelong learner," adding, "Dreaming of what the world ought to be - to me, that is the university at its best."

Inside the entrance of Geisel Library, four more students are pictured on glass panels, seated above real eucalyptus wood benches designed by UC San Diego Visual Arts alumnus Roy McMakin '79. © 2001-2026 John Baldessari Family Foundation Courtesy Estate of John Baldessari; Sprüth Magers

For Vejea Jennings '03, "READ/ WRITE/THINK/DREAM" is about something else: his brother, Mikéah. And it's the place family and friends return to, year after year.

Vejea was the third Jennings brother to attend UC San Diego, along with his older brothers, Dudley Jennings '00 and Mikéah Jennings '01. Their parents emigrated from the Caribbean, and the three brothers grew up in Antelope Valley in California's Mojave Desert. Vejea says Mikéah always had a cool, unique look, especially for the late 1990s. It's no wonder that a photographer noticed Mikéah walking down Library Walk and asked him to join the photoshoot.

"He had a really powerful presence, an electric personality," says Vejea. "If he was in the room, you would know it."

After graduating, Mikéah moved to New York to pursue a career on stage. "It was where the theatre community could take him the furthest," says Vejea. And it did: A passion for experimental and boundary-pushing theater, including work in gender, performance and visual representation, took Mikéah all over the world. He was also a teacher at Stanford University, MIT, the New School and State University of New York College at Purchase.

"Every time I'd have a crazy afternoon as a student, I'd walk the Snake Path and come back to the entrance of the library," recalls Vejea. "Late afternoon, the sun would blaze off Geisel and the light would hit the glass. And I'd think: How could I not succeed? How could I not dream, if my brother and some of the best friends I've made in my life are permanently installed above me?"

Mikéah passed away unexpectedly at age 43. Since then, the doors of Geisel Library have become a pilgrimage site for the Jenningses. "It became something really special for our family after he passed," he says.

The family has dozens of photos from friends and family who came to campus just to take a photo at the library with Mikéah.

For Vejea, an English and Literature professor at Antelope Valley College in Lancaster, California, the artwork offers an important message for students.

"I think students needed to see a Mikéah, a Denise, an Ernesto and the others up there," he says. "You need to be able to see yourself at this university. To me, that's a powerful message."

Slender California palms reach toward the sky on the adjacent glass panel, a photomural of the ocean with surfers on a wall just beyond. © 2001-2026 John Baldessari Family Foundation Courtesy Estate of John Baldessari; Sprüth Magers Photo by Erik Jepsen/UC San Diego

The students remain at the heart of this art piece. Twenty-five years have passed; the university has continued to evolve, yet they remain. A record of their time. A reminder of what was and what can be. They are forever UC San Diego.

Learn more about the Stuart Collection at stuartcollection.ucsd.edu.

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