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. Lawrence Rinder was Director from 2008, succeeded by Julie Rodrigues Widholm in August, 2020.[1][2] The museum is a member of the North American Reciprocal Museums program.
The University of California art collection began with Flight into Egypt, a 16th-century oil on wood panel by the School of Joachim Patinir gifted to the university by San Francisco banker and financier François Louis Alfred Pioche in 1870.[3][4] The museum was founded in 1963 after a donation was made to the university from artist and teacher Hans Hofmann of 45 paintings[5] plus $250,000. A competition to design a building was announced in 1964, and the museum, designed by Mario Ciampi, opened in 1970.[6] Founding Director Peter Selz, formerly of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, served from 1965 to 1973 and played a key role in establishing the museum, championing unorthodox Bay Area artists.[7]
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.
Joan Miró, Metamorphosis, mixed media, 1936, one of 15 works given to the museum in 2021 from the Richard and Mary L. Gray Collection.
In 2009, the museum acquired (as a gift from the artist) 56 paintings and drawings from the Abu Ghraib Series by Fernando Botero.[10][11] Selections from the series have been regularly included in the museum's annual Art for Human Rights exhibitions.[12]
In 2014, the museum acquired San Francisco collector and dealer Steven Leiber's collection of Conceptual art and art materials, as well as his library of reference and artists' books related to Conceptualism and the Fluxus movement. According to The New York Times, "with the acquisition…the museum and film archive will become one of the world’s most important centers for the study of Conceptual art."[13]
In 2019, as a bequest, the museum acquired the Eli Leon Collection of almost 3,000 works by African-American quilt makers, including more than 500 works by Rosie Lee Tompkins. The collection now accounts for about 15 percent of the museum's art collection.[14][15] 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."[16][17] A subsequent exhibition showcasing the broader Eli Leon Collection is planned for 2022.[14]
The Pacific Film Archive (PFA) was founded by Sheldon Renan, who began screening films on the UC campus in 1966 and was appointed Director of the new PFA in 1967.[19][20] 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."[21] 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.[22] The PFA also includes a library and study center,[23] and maintains online catalogs of its films and books[24] and an online database of documentation associated with the films.[25]
BAMPFA's major retrospective in March 2019 of the work of Hans Hofmann, who was instrumental in the creation of the museum. Photo by Steven Saylor.
Buildings
The former Berkeley Art Museum building was designed by Mario Ciampi and opened in 1970.[6] The concrete Brutalist 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.[26]
Interior of the former (seismically unsafe) Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive building designed by Mario Ciampi
In 2008, BAMPFA unveiled plans for a new visual arts center, to be designed by the Japanese architect Toyo Ito and located in downtown Berkeley, across the street from UC Berkeley's main entrance.[27][28][29] 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 printing plant at that site, a 1939 Art Deco building on the California Register of Historic Resources and qualified to be on the National Register of Historic Places.[26][30][31]
Berkeley Art Museum sign (detail), photo 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.[32] 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.[32] Construction began in 2013.[33] The museum re-opened to the public on January 31, 2016.[34] The building totals 83,000 square feet, with 25,000 square feet of gallery space.[35]
The vacated Mario Ciampi building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2014.[36] The building, seismically retrofitted and "reimagined", reopened in late 2021 as the Bakar BioEnginuity Hub, an incubator for biotechnology start-ups,[37][38] named Woo Hon Fai Hall in honor of the father of a donor, David Woo.[39]
Theresa Hak Kyung Cha was an American novelist, producer, director, and artist of South Korean origin, best known for her 1982 novel, Dictée. Considered an avant-garde artist, Cha was fluent in Korean, English, and French. The main body of Cha's work is "looking for the roots of language before it is born on the tip of the tongue." Cha's practice experiments with language through repetition, manipulation, reduction, and isolation, exploring the ways in which language marks one's identity, in unstable and multiple expressions. Cha's interdisciplinary background was clearly evident in Dictée, which experiments with juxtaposition and hypertext of both print and visual media. Cha's Dictée is frequently taught in contemporary literature classes including women's literature.
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.
Mario Joseph Ciampi 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.
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 her work "one of the century’s major artistic accomplishments." More than 500 works by Tompkins reside at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive.
Squeak Carnwath is an American contemporary painter and arts educator. She is a professor emerita of art at the University of California, Berkeley. She has a studio in Oakland, California, where she has lived and worked since 1970.
Howard Fried is an American conceptual artist who became known in the 1970s for his pioneering work in video art, performance art, and installation art.
Katherine Westphal was an American textile designer and fiber artist who helped to establish quilting as a fine art form.
Tom Marioni is an American artist and educator, known for his conceptual artwork. Marioni was active in the emergence of Conceptual Art movement in the 1960s. He founded the Museum of Conceptual Art (MOCA) in San Francisco from 1970 until 1984.
Megan Williams is a contemporary artist who creates wall drawings, three-dimensional drawings, and traditional sculpture.
Travis Collinson is a visual artist whose paintings take elements from photographs and sketches and reinterpret them at larger scale.
Tony Labat is a Cuban-born American multimedia artist, installation artist, and professor. He has exhibited internationally, developing a body of work in performance, video, sculpture and installation. Labat's work has dealt with investigations of the body, popular culture, identity, urban relations, politics, and the media.
Olya Dubatova is a Russian born visual artist. Since 2008 she has exhibited internationally. She lives in California and New York City.
Léonie Guyer is a contemporary artist known for abstract paintings, drawings and installations utilizing materials such as antique, vintage and handmade paper, marble remnants, wood panels, and in site-based projects, walls and windows.
Marlon Mullen is a painter who lives and works in Contra Costa County, California, maintaining a studio practice at NIAD Art Center.
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.
Wesley Tongson was a Hong Kong artist with family roots in Guangdong Province. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia at age 15 and started painting at age 17. From that time until his death, Tongson dedicated himself to exploring various painting techniques with ink, ranging from Chinese brush painting, splash ink painting and eventually, finger painting.
Richmond Art Center is a nonprofit arts organization based in Richmond, California, founded in 1936.
Heidi Zuckerman is an American museum director and curator who is CEO and director of the Orange County Museum of Art in Costa Mesa, California.
Jim Melchert was an American visual artist, arts administer, and professor. He known for his ceramics and sculptures. Melchert was part of the Funk art movement.
Katherine Sherwood is an American artist living and working in the San Francisco Bay Area, California who is known for paintings that explore disability, feminism, and healing, and for her teaching and disability rights activism at the Department of Art Practice at the University of California, Berkeley.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
