Exhibits
Exhibits and Ongoing Events
Hans Hofmann: The Nature of Abstraction
Exhibit - Painting | February 27 – July 21, 2019 every Sunday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday & Saturday | Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
Bringing together nearly seventy works spanning the entirety of the artist’s career, this exhibition presents a fresh and eye-opening examination of Hans Hofmann’s prolific and innovative artistic practice. Featuring paintings and works on paper from 1930 through the end of Hofmann’s life in 1966, the exhibition includes numerous masterworks from BAMPFA’s distinguished collection as well as many... More >
Illustrating México one page at a time-Print Art of José Guadalupe Posada.
Exhibit - Multimedia | February 8 – June 30, 2019 every day | Moffitt Undergraduate Library, 2nd floor
343386 N/AIn the pantheon of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century artists who represent Mexico and Mexican art, the artwork of José Guadalupe Posada stands out as a bright constellation that continues to shine a light on important stories through woodcuts, imprints, and engravings. This exhibition was created using the books from the collections of the Doe Library. The exhibition is envisioned... More >
Aaron Marcus: Early Works
Exhibit - Multimedia | February 6 – June 30, 2019 every day | Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
Educated in physics, mathematics, and philosophy at Princeton University and trained in graphic design at Yale, Berkeley-based Aaron Marcus explores new possibilities for expression. He created his first “computer-assisted poem-drawings” in the spring of 1972, when he served as a research associate at Yale University’s School of Art and Architecture. Using standard typographical symbols, Marcus... More >
Pleasure, Poison, Prescription, Prayer: The Worlds of Mind-Altering Substances
Exhibit - Artifacts | March 15 – December 15, 2019 every Sunday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday & Saturday | 11 a.m.-5 p.m. | Hearst Museum of Anthropology
Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology
If you sip a cup of coffee, are you on drugs? If you try psychedelics, are you committing a crime? If you have a sweet tooth, are you a sugar addict?
Since the beginning of human existence, peoples of the world have altered their minds with countless plant-based substances. They have done so for many reasons, ranging from pleasure to health to ceremony, with effects both harmful and benign,... More >
Permanent Accusation: Art for Human Rights
Exhibit - Painting | April 10 – June 30, 2019 every Sunday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday & Saturday | 11 a.m.-7 p.m. | Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
Fifteen years ago this April, photographs taken inside the Iraqi prison at Abu Ghraib became public in what amounted to a shocking disclosure of torture perpetrated by United States military intelligence officers against Iraqi detainees. They pictured prisoners stripped naked, hooded, and threatened by dogs, their dehumanization made more ghastly by American guards appearing casually next to... More >
The 49th Annual University of California, Berkeley Master of Fine Arts Graduate Exhibition
Exhibit - Multimedia | May 17 – June 16, 2019 every Sunday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday & Saturday | 11 a.m.-7 p.m. | Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
For the forty-ninth year, BAMPFA and the University of California, Berkeley Department of Art Practice have collaborated to present an exhibition of works by Berkeley Master of Fine Arts graduates. This year’s exhibition includes the exceptional work of Chrystia Cabral, Ricki Dwyer, Heesoo Kwon, Gabriella Willenz, and Connie Zheng.
Looking: The Art of Frederick Hammersley
Exhibit - Multimedia | April 10 – June 23, 2019 every Sunday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday & Saturday | 11 a.m.-7 p.m. | Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
Born in Salt Lake City in 1919, Frederick Hammersley moved to the Bay Area at a young age and first studied art in San Francisco. Stationed in Paris during World War II, he took the opportunity to meet Pablo Picasso and Constantin Brancusi, as well as study at the École des Beaux Arts. Upon returning to the United States, Hammersley enrolled in the Chouinard Art Institute (which became the... More >
About Things Loved: Blackness and Belonging
Exhibit - Painting | May 17 – July 21, 2019 every Sunday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday & Saturday | 11 a.m.-7 p.m. | Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
Featuring creations by black artists in the collections of BAMPFA and the Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology, this exhibition highlights works by Peter Bradley, Erica Deeman, Charles Gaines, Mildred Howard, Kamau Amu Patton, Raymond Saunders, Lorna Simpson, Carrie Mae Weems, and Fred Wilson, among others. Recognizing that museums have not been exempt from anti-black practices that exclude,... More >
Art Wall: Carlos Amorales
Exhibit - Painting | March 27 – October 13, 2019 every Sunday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday & Saturday | 11 a.m.-7 p.m. | Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
In this new commission for the BAMPFA Art Wall, entitled Ghost Demonstration, Amorales draws from the multiple histories of mural art in Mexico, the political demonstrations that occurred in Berkeley in the 1960s (as well as more recent events), and protests in the United Kingdom in the 1980s. In order to make this monumental mural, the artist used stencils of slogans from Berkeley protest... More >
Unlimited: Recent Gifts from the William Goodman and Victoria Belco Photography Collection
Exhibit - Photography | March 27 – September 1, 2019 every Sunday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday & Saturday | 11 a.m.-7 p.m. | Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
This exhibition celebrates a major gift of photography, donated over a period of several years, from Berkeley collectors William Goodman and Victoria Belco in memory of their daughter Teresa Goodman. While the exhibition features some historical photographs, such as pictures by the early twentieth-century French photographer Jacques-Henri Lartigue (most of whose work was made between the ages of... More >
Museum without Walls: The Mexican Masks
Exhibit - Artifacts | May 13 – June 13, 2019 every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday with exceptions | 12-5 p.m. | 2334 Bowditch (Center for Latin American Studies)
Latin American Studies, Center for
In collaboration with the Mexican Museum, CLAS is hosting an exhibition of 15 Mexican masks from the 19th and 20th centuries. In this collection, we see representations of pre-Columbian American concepts, as well as Spanish Baroque realism. Together, these masks communicate that the human being is diverse behind a wooden face.
Pièces de Résistance: Echoes of Judaea Capta From Ancient Coins to Modern Art
Exhibit - Multimedia | January 29 – June 28, 2019 every Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday & Friday | 11 a.m.-4 p.m. | Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life (2121 Allston Way)
Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life
This exhibition will be continuing in Spring 2019.
Notions of resistance, alongside fears and realities of oppression, resound throughout Jewish history. As a minority, Jews express their political aspirations, ideals of heroism, and yearnings of retaliation and redemption in their rituals, art, and everyday life.
Centering on coins in The Magnes Collection, this exhibition explores how... More >
Project “Holy Land”: Yaakov Benor-Kalter’s Photographs of British Mandate Palestine, 1923-1940
Exhibit - Photography | January 29 – June 28, 2019 every Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday & Friday | 11 a.m.-4:05 p.m. | Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life (2121 Allston Way)
Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life
For nearly two decades, Yaakov (Jacob) Benor-Kalter (1897-1969) traversed the Old City of Jerusalem, documenting renowned historical monuments, ambiguous subjects in familiar alleyways, and scores of “new Jews” building a new homeland. Benor-Kalter’s photographs smoothly oscillate between two worlds, and two Holy Lands, with one lens.
After immigrating from Poland to the British Mandate of... More >
The Worlds of Arthur Szyk: The Taube Family Arthur Szyk Collection
Exhibit - Painting | January 29 – June 28, 2019 every Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday & Friday | 11 a.m.-4 p.m. | Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life (2121 Allston Way)
Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life
Auditorium installation of high-resolution images of select collection items.
Acquired by The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life in 2017 thanks to an unprecedented gift from Taube Philanthropies, the most significant collection of works by Arthur Szyk (Łódź, Poland, 1894 – New Canaan, Connecticut, 1951) is now available to the world in a public institution for the first time as... More >
Memory Objects: Judaica Collections, Global Migrations
Exhibit - Artifacts | February 26 – June 28, 2019 every Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday & Friday | 11 a.m.-4 p.m. | Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life (2121 Allston Way)
Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life
The First World War (1914-1918) uprooted millions across Europe, and beyond. Many Jews left Eastern and Southern Europe, bringing with them prized personal and communal belongings. In an attempt to rescue precious heritage from imminent destruction, these “memory objects” often ended up with museums, collectors, and art dealers in the West.
Artist's Talk: Aaron Marcus: Typography Dreaming
Exhibit - Painting | June 14 | Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
In conjunction with his current exhibition at BAMPFA, noted graphic designer, artist, and author Aaron Marcus presents an illustrated lecture about his experimental visible language design.
Engaged with signs, symbols, and typographic compositions for more than sixty-five years, Marcus was the first graphic designer to work full time with computers (1967), the first professional designer of... More >
Guided Tours: About Things Loved: Blackness and Belonging
Exhibit - Painting | June 15 | 2 p.m. | Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
Featuring works by Black artists in the collections of BAMPFA and the Hearst Museum of Anthropology, this compelling exhibition imagines the liberatory possibilities of celebrating blackness and belonging. Join the graduate-student organizers of the exhibition for a guided tour on selected Wednesdays and Saturdays. Tours will be led by Leslie Huang, Patricia de Nobrega Gomes, Angela... More >
