The Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA, formerly abbreviated as BAM/PFA) are a combined art museum, repertory movie theater, and archive associated with the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

Lawrence Rinder Lawrence R. Rinder is a contemporary art curator and museum director. He directed the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) from 2008 to 2020. Education Rinder received a B.A. in art from Reed College and an M.A. in art history fro ...

was Director from 2008, succeeded by Julie Rodrigues Widholm in August, 2020. The museum is a member of the

North American Reciprocal Museums The North American Reciprocal Museum (NARM) program is an affiliation of arts, historical, and cultural institutions in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Bermuda, and El Salvador which offer reciprocal benefits to qualifying members of other part ...

program.

Collection

Art

Flight into Egypt--School of Joachim Patinir--BAMPFA

The University of California art collection began with ''Flight into Egypt'', a 16th-century oil on wood panel by the School of

Joachim Patinir Joachim Patinir, also called Patenier (c. 1480 – 5 October 1524), was a Flemish Renaissance painter of history and landscape subjects. He was Flemish, from the area of modern Wallonia, but worked in Antwerp, then the centre of the art market ...

gifted to the university by San Francisco banker and financier François Louis Alfred Pioche in 1870. The museum was founded in 1963 after a donation was made to the university from artist and teacher

Hans Hofmann Hans Hofmann (March 21, 1880 – February 17, 1966) was a German-born American painter, renowned as both an artist and teacher. His career spanned two generations and two continents, and is considered to have both preceded and influenced Abstrac ...

of 45 paintings plus $250,000. A competition to design a building was announced in 1964, and the museum, designed by

Mario Ciampi Mario Joseph Ciampi (April 27, 1907 – July 6, 2006) was an American architect and urban planner best known for his modern design influence on public spaces and buildings in the San Francisco Bay Area. Biography Ciampi's parents emigrated from ...

, opened in 1970.BAM/PFA Mission & History
/ref> Founding Director

Peter Selz Peter Howard Selz (March 27, 1919 – June 21, 2019) was a German-born American art historian and museum director and curator who specialized in German Expressionism. Biography Peter Selz was born in Munich of Jewish parents. In 1936, aged 17, h ...

, formerly of the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

in New York, served from 1965 to 1973 and played a key role in establishing the museum, championing unorthodox Bay Area artists. The collection holds more than 22,000 works of art, including Ming and Qing dynasty Chinese paintings, Mughal dynasty Indian miniature painting, Baroque painting, old master prints and drawings, early American painting, African-American quilts, 19th and 20th century photography, Conceptual art, and international contemporary art. The museum has featured works by

Albert Bierstadt Albert Bierstadt (January 7, 1830 – February 18, 1902) was a German-American painter best known for his lavish, sweeping landscapes of the American West. He joined several journeys of the Westward Expansion to paint the scenes. He was no ...

Jonathan Borofsky Jonathan Borofsky (born December 24, 1942) is an American sculptor and printmaker who lives and works in Ogunquit, Maine. Early life and education Borofsky was born in Boston, Massachusetts. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts at Carnegie Mel ...

Joan Brown Joan Brown (born Joan Vivien Beatty; February 13, 1938 – October 26, 1990) was an American figurative painter who lived and worked in Northern California. She was a member of the "second generation" of the Bay Area Figurative Movement.Glu ...

Robert Colescott Robert H. Colescott (August 26, 1925 – June 4, 2009) was an American Painting, painter. He is known for Satire, satirical genre and crowd subjects, often conveying his exuberant, comical, or bitter reflections on being African American. He stud ...

Jay DeFeo Jay DeFeo (March 31, 1929 – November 11, 1989) was a visual artist who first became celebrated in the 1950s as part of the spirited community of Beat artists, musicians, and poets in San Francisco. Best known for her monumental work ''The Rose' ...

Helen Frankenthaler Helen Frankenthaler (December 12, 1928 – December 27, 2011) was an American abstract expressionist painter. She was a major contributor to the history of postwar American painting. Having exhibited her work for over six decades (early 1950s u ...

Paul Gauguin Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin (, ; ; 7 June 1848 – 8 May 1903) was a French Post-Impressionist artist. Unappreciated until after his death, Gauguin is now recognized for his experimental use of colour and Synthetist style that were distinct fr ...

Juan Gris José Victoriano González-Pérez (23 March 1887 – 11 May 1927), better known as Juan Gris (; ), was a Spanish painter born in Madrid who lived and worked in France for most of his active period. Closely connected to the innovative artistic ge ...

Ant Farm A formicarium or ant farm is a vivarium which is designed primarily for the study of ant colonies and how ants behave. Those who study ant behavior are known as myrmecologists. History The formicarium was invented by Charles Janet, a French ...

Howard Fried Howard Fried (born June 14, 1946, in Cleveland, Ohio) is an American conceptual artist who became known in the 1970s for his pioneering work in video art, performance art, and installation art. He lives and works in Vallejo, California. Biography ...

Paul Kos Paul Joseph Kos (born December 23, 1942) is an American conceptual artist and educator, he is one of the founders of the Bay Area Conceptual Art movement in California. Kos incorporates video, sound and interactivity into his sculptural installa ...

Robert Mapplethorpe Robert Michael Mapplethorpe (; November 4, 1946 – March 9, 1989) was an American photographer, best known for his black-and-white photographs. His work featured an array of subjects, including celebrity portraits, male and female nudes, self-p ...

Knox Martin Knox Martin (February 12, 1923 – May 15, 2022) was an American painter, sculptor, and muralist. Born in Barranquilla, Colombia, he studied at the Art Students League of New York from 1946 until 1950. He was one of the leading members of the N ...

Jackson Pollock Paul Jackson Pollock (; January 28, 1912August 11, 1956) was an American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. He was widely noticed for his " drip technique" of pouring or splashing liquid household paint onto a hor ...

Mark Rothko Mark Rothko (), born Markus Yakovlevich Rothkowitz (russian: Ма́ркус Я́ковлевич Ротко́вич, link=no, lv, Markuss Rotkovičs, link=no; name not Anglicized until 1940; September 25, 1903 – February 25, 1970), was a Latv ...

, and

Sebastião Salgado Sebastião Ribeiro Salgado Júnior (born February 8, 1944) is a Brazilian social documentary photographer and photojournalist. He has traveled in over 120 countries for his photographic projects. Most of these have appeared in numerous press pu ...

. The museum also features the MATRIX Program for Contemporary Art. MATRIX has featured artists such as

Jean-Michel Basquiat Jean-Michel Basquiat (; December 22, 1960 – August 12, 1988) was an American artist who rose to success during the 1980s as part of the Neo-expressionism movement. Basquiat first achieved fame as part of the graffiti duo SAMO, alongside Al ...

Louise Bourgeois Louise Joséphine Bourgeois (; 25 December 191131 May 2010) was a French-American artist. Although she is best known for her large-scale sculpture and installation art, Bourgeois was also a prolific painter and printmaker. She explored a varie ...

James Lee Byars James Lee Byars (April 10, 1932, Detroit, Michigan – May 23, 1997, Cairo, Egypt) was an American conceptual artist and performance artist specializing in installations and sculptures, as well as a self-considered mystic. He was best known for h ...

Sophie Calle Sophie Calle (born 9 October 1953) is a French writer, photographer, installation artist, and conceptual artist. Calle's work is distinguished by its use of arbitrary sets of constraints, and evokes the French literary movement known as Oulipo. ...

Willem de Kooning Willem de Kooning (; ; April 24, 1904 – March 19, 1997) was a Dutch-American abstract expressionist artist. He was born in Rotterdam and moved to the United States in 1926, becoming an American citizen in 1962. In 1943, he married painter El ...

Juan Downey Juan Downey (May 11, 1940 – June 9, 1993) was a Chilean artist who was a pioneer in the fields of video art and interactive art. Early life and education Downey was born in Santiago, Chile. His father, David Downey V., was a distinguished ar ...

Eva Hesse Eva Hesse (January 11, 1936 – May 29, 1970) was a German-born American sculptor known for her pioneering work in materials such as latex, fiberglass, and plastics. She is one of the artists who ushered in the postminimal art movement in the 196 ...

Sol LeWitt Solomon "Sol" LeWitt (September 9, 1928 – April 8, 2007) was an American artist linked to various movements, including conceptual art and minimalism. LeWitt came to fame in the late 1960s with his wall drawings and "structures" (a term he pref ...

Shirin Neshat Shirin Neshat ( fa, شیرین نشاط; born March 26, 1957 in Qazvin) is an Iranian visual artist who lives in New York City, known primarily for her work in film, video and photography. Her artwork centers on the contrasts between Islam and th ...

Nancy Spero Nancy Spero (August 24, 1926 – October 18, 2009) was an American visual artist. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Spero lived for much of her life in New York City. She married and collaborated with artist Leon Golub. As both artist and activist, Nanc ...

Cecilia Vicuña Cecilia Vicuña (born 1948) is a Chilean poet and artist based in New York and Santiago, Chile. Her work is noted for themes of language, memory, dissolution, extinction and exile. Critics also note the relevance of her work to the politics of ec ...

, and

Andy Warhol Andy Warhol (; born Andrew Warhola Jr.; August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American visual artist, film director, and producer who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore the relationsh ...

In 2009, the museum acquired (as a gift from the artist) 56 paintings and drawings from the

Abu Ghraib Abu Ghraib (; ar, أبو غريب, ''Abū Ghurayb'') is a city in the Baghdad Governorate of Iraq, located just west of Baghdad's city center, or northwest of Baghdad International Airport. It has a population of 189,000 (2003). The old road t ...

Series by

Fernando Botero Fernando Botero Angulo (born 19 April 1932) is a Colombian figurative artist and sculptor, born in Medellín. His signature style, also known as "Boterismo", depicts people and figures in large, exaggerated volume, which can represent political ...

. Selections from the series have been regularly included in the museum's annual Art for Human Rights exhibitions. In 2014, the museum acquired San Francisco collector and dealer Steven Leiber's collection of

Conceptual art Conceptual art, also referred to as conceptualism, is art in which the concept(s) or idea(s) involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic, technical, and material concerns. Some works of conceptual art, sometimes called insta ...

and art materials, as well as his library of reference and artists' books related to

Conceptualism In metaphysics, conceptualism is a theory that explains universality of particulars as conceptualized frameworks situated within the thinking mind. Intermediate between nominalism and realism, the conceptualist view approaches the metaphysical co ...

and the

Fluxus Fluxus was an international, interdisciplinary community of artists, composers, designers and poets during the 1960s and 1970s who engaged in experimental art performances which emphasized the artistic process over the finished product. Fluxus ...

movement. According to ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', "with the acquisition…the museum and film archive will become one of the world’s most important centers for the study of Conceptual art." In 2019, as a bequest, the museum acquired the

Eli Leon Eli Leon (1935–2018) born as Robert Stanley Leon, was an American psychologist, writer and collector. As a self-taught scholar of African-American quilts, he helped bring attention to the field and especially to the quilts of Rosie Lee Tompkins. ...

Collection of almost 3,000 works by African-American quilt makers, including more than 500 works by

Rosie Lee Tompkins Rosie Lee Tompkins (1936–2006) is the art pseudonym of Effie Mae Martin Howard, a widely-acclaimed African-American quiltmaker and fiber artist of Richmond, California. ''The New York Times'' called her "one of the great American artists," and ...

. The collection now accounts for about 15 percent of the museum's art collection. Drawing from the Eli Leon Collection, BAMPFA presented ''Rosie Lee Tompkins: A Retrospective'' in 2020; ''The New York Times'' called it "a triumphal retrospective" that "confirms her standing as one of the great American artists–transcending craft, challenging painting and reshaping the canon." A subsequent exhibition showcasing the broader Eli Leon Collection is planned for 2022. In 2021, a gift from the Richard and Mary L. Gray Collection added 15 significant works on paper to the collection, by artists including

Guercino Giovanni Francesco Barbieri (February 8, 1591 – December 22, 1666),Miller, 1964 better known as Guercino, or il Guercino , was an Italian Baroque painter and draftsman from Cento in the Emilia region, who was active in Rome and Bologna. The vig ...

Tiepolo Giovanni Battista Tiepolo ( , ; March 5, 1696 – March 27, 1770), also known as Giambattista (or Gianbattista) Tiepolo, was an Italian painter and printmaker from the Republic of Venice who painted in the Rococo style, considered an import ...

Guardi Francesco Lazzaro Guardi (; 5 October 1712 – 1 January 1793) was an Italian painter, nobleman, and a member of the Venetian School. He is considered to be among the last practitioners, along with his brothers, of the classic Venetian school of ...

, Géricault,

Paul Klee Paul Klee (; 18 December 1879 – 29 June 1940) was a Swiss-born German artist. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. Klee was a natural draftsman who experimented wi ...

, and Miró.

Film

The Pacific Film Archive (PFA) was founded by

Sheldon Renan Sheldon Renan (born 1941) is a writer. His first book, An Introduction To The American Underground Film, was published in America by Dutton in 1967. In England it was printed by Studio Vista (1968) as "The Underground film. An introduction to its ...

, who began screening films on the UC campus in 1966 and was appointed Director of the new PFA in 1967. The PFA specializes in programming films "in a theoretical or critical context—exploring, for example, film noir in the context of the post-war ethos." Lectures by film scholars and visits from filmmakers further contextualize the programming. The archive houses 16,000 films and videos, including the largest collection of Japanese films outside of Japan. The PFA also includes a library and study center, and maintains online catalogs of its films and books and an online database of documentation associated with the films. File:Hans Hofmann exhibit at BAMPFA March 2019 photo by Steven Saylor.jpg, BAMPFA's major retrospective in March 2019 of the work of

, who was instrumental in the creation of the museum. Photo by

Steven Saylor Steven Saylor (born March 23, 1956) is an American author of historical novels. He is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin, where he studied history and classics. Saylor's best-known work is his ''Roma Sub Rosa'' historical mystery ...

Buildings

File:BAMPFA entrance (cropped).jpg The former Berkeley Art Museum building was designed by

and opened in 1970. The concrete

Brutalist Brutalist architecture is an architectural style that emerged during the 1950s in the United Kingdom, among the reconstruction projects of the post-war era. Brutalist buildings are characterised by Minimalism (art), minimalist constructions th ...

building was deemed seismically unsafe in 1997, and iron braces were added in 2001 to improve safety. In 1999, the Pacific Film Archive moved to a temporary building across the street. Interior_view_-_Berkeley_Art_Museum_and_Pacific_Film_Archive_-_DSC04185

Interior_view_-_Berkeley_Art_Museum_and_Pacific_Film_Archive_-_DSC04185

In 2008, BAMPFA unveiled plans for a new visual arts center, to be designed by the Japanese architect

Toyo Ito is a Japanese architect known for creating conceptual architecture, in which he seeks to simultaneously express the physical and virtual worlds. He is a leading exponent of architecture that addresses the contemporary notion of a "simulated" ...

and located in downtown Berkeley, across the street from UC Berkeley's main entrance. In 2009 those plans were cancelled. Citing the weak economy and trouble raising necessary funds, BAMPFA decided to retrofit and enlarge (rather than demolish) the former

University of California Press The University of California Press, otherwise known as UC Press, is a publishing house associated with the University of California that engages in academic publishing. It was founded in 1893 to publish scholarly and scientific works by faculty ...

printing plant at that site, a 1939

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unite ...

building on the

California Register of Historic Resources The California Register of Historical Resources is a California California government, state government program for use by state and local agencies, private groups, and citizens to identify, evaluate, register and protect California's history, hist ...

and qualified to be on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

Berkeley Art Museum sign by Steven Saylor

In 2011, BAMPFA presented the schematic design for the $100 million transformation of the former printing plant into its new home, designed by the New York firm

Diller Scofidio + Renfro Diller Scofidio + Renfro is an American interdisciplinary design studio that integrates architecture, the visual arts, and the performing arts. Based in New York City, Diller Scofidio + Renfro is led by four partners – Elizabeth Diller, Ricardo ...

. Located at 2155 Center Street in downtown Berkeley, the building combines the existing concrete structure with a new metal-clad, skylighted addition that includes several galleries, a 232-seat theater, a store and a learning center. Construction began in 2013. The museum re-opened to the public on January 31, 2016. The building totals 83,000 square feet, with 25,000 square feet of gallery space. The vacated Mario Ciampi building was added to the

in 2014. The building, seismically retrofitted and "reimagined", reopened in late 2021 as the Bakar BioEnginuity Hub, an incubator for

biotechnology Biotechnology is the integration of natural sciences and engineering sciences in order to achieve the application of organisms, cells, parts thereof and molecular analogues for products and services. The term ''biotechnology'' was first used b ...

start-ups, named Woo Hon Fai Hall in honor of the father of a donor, David Woo.

References

External links

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Collection

Art

Film

Buildings

See also

References

External links