To improve links among contemporary Asian and Pacific communities and cultural institutions, international scholars will meet at the University of California, Davis, Thursday, Oct. 19 through Saturday, Oct. 21, to discuss how cultures from these areas can be interpreted and taught in the next century. During the conference titled "Rewriting the Pacific: Cultures, Frontiers and the Migration of Metaphors," artists and writers from around the world will talk about cultural identity and migration and explore new directions in creative and critical work linking the humanities, social sciences and environmental sciences. Discussions will focus on three areas: myths of national identity; the garden, wilderness and city; and tourism. The conference is the outgrowth of the ongoing Pacific Bridges Project, sponsored by U.S., New Zealand, Canadian and Australian universities and institutions, including UC. Accompanying the conference, part of which will be held at UC Berkeley, are a number of exhibitions and performances. Conference speakers, who will include UC faculty members, will ask such questions as how people from indigenous and migrant cultures of Asia and the Pacific wish to be interpreted and displayed in museums, schools, art galleries and tourist sites, and what stories and artifacts should be preserved from today's tourists and migrants. "Because of transPacific migration over the past century and a half, we have a great collective store of knowledge about the problems and triumphs that have grown from the struggle to forge a common life between members of the world's cultures," says conference coordinator Kay Flavell, a New Zealander who is an associate professor of critical theory at UC Davis. "Now we need to shape that knowledge into new national and transnational forms." Ideally, the conference will promote more study of living Asian, Pacific Island and Pacific American cultures at universities and encourage more students to do internships at museums and art galleries around the Pacific, according to Flavell. As the scholars at the conference discuss these topics, the public is encouraged to participate in the sessions, Flavell said, to enhance the building of a public community around the Pacific. Conference sessions will be held at the University Club and the Memorial Union on the Davis campus from Thursday through Saturday afternoon. Evening sessions on Saturday, Oct. 21, and sessions on Sunday, Oct. 22, will be held on the UC Berkeley campus. Among the related exhibitions are: • "Art With/out Frontiers," an exhibit of the work of John Bevan Ford, a Maori artist, along with the work of two Native American artists, Lillian Pitt and Rick Bartow, at the Memorial Union Art Gallery through Oct. 22. • "Rewriting the Pacific: Where All Cultures Meet," a display of ceramic masks by Pitt at the City of Davis offices, along with graphics by Bartow and Ford, in conjunction with the larger exhibition in the Memorial Union gallery, through Nov. 10. • "Migrations and Memories: China and America," a display with a tea theme illustrating the networks formed by two local families, Ruth Robbins Painter and the Yee family of Sacramento, in the entrance lobby of the UC Davis Shields Library, through Oct. 26. • "One Dollar/One Day," an exhibition at the UC Davis Alumni and Visitors Center of photographs of the Chinese communities in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta by Peter Leung, though Oct. 31. • "Dorothy, Jack, Theodore, Diego and A Horse of a Different Color," the recent works of Conrad Atkinson, UC Davis art professor, at the University Art Museum in Berkeley, through Dec. 31. The conference is sponsored by the Pacific Bridges Project; the University of California, including the Office of the President, UC Education Abroad Program, UC Davis College of Letters and Science, UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, Davis Humanities Institute, UC Berkeley Townsend Center for the Humanities and UC Berkeley Center for Japanese Studies; as well as the New Zealand Arts Council and the Canadian consulate, among others. Conference sessions are open to the public for a $50 total registration fee. A special one-day registration fee for the Saturday, Oct. 21 sessions, including lunch, is $20. Single session registration is $5.