UC Berkeley Art Museum - Berkeley, CA - Art Museums on Waymarking.com

"The University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAM/PFA) is the visual arts center of the University of California, Berkeley. One of the largest university art museums in the United States, in both size and attendance, BAM/PFA opened the doors of its distinctive Modernist building on the south side of the UC Berkeley campus in 1970. BAM/PFA's diverse exhibition programs and its collections of more than 14,000 objects and 10,000 films and videos are characterized by themes of artistic innovation, intellectual exploration, and social commentary, and reflect the central role of education in BAM/PFA's mission.

BAM History, Collections, and Exhibitions

The museum was founded in 1963 following artist and teacher Hans Hofmann's donation of forty-five paintings and $250,000 to the University; today BAM/PFA's collection of work by this important Abstract Expressionist artist remains the largest in any museum internationally. An architectural competition to design the new museum building was announced in November 1964, and the following year San Francisco architect Mario Ciampi and associates Richard L. Jorasch and Ronald E. Wagner were named the winners. The jury declared, "The richness of this building will arise from the sculptural beauty of its rugged major forms and will not require costly materials or elaborate details. We believe this design...can become one of the outstanding contributions to museum design in our time." Construction began in 1967, and the building opened on November 7, 1970.

Over three decades the museum's collection has evolved with particular strengths in historical and contemporary Asian art; early American painting; mid-twentieth-century, Conceptual, and contemporary international art; and California and Bay Area art. Highlights include important works by Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, Albert Bierstadt, Paul Gauguin, Helen Frankenthaler, Jay DeFeo, Joan Brown, Jonathan Borofsky, and Shirin Neshat. Significant additions in recent years include the Jean and Francis Marshall Collection of Indian miniatures, and selected works from the renowned collection of Chinese painting belonging to UC Berkeley Professor Emeritus James Cahill and Cahill family members.

The museum provides the UC Berkeley and Bay Area communities with an ambitious schedule of exhibitions exploring international art, both historical and contemporary. Each year, the museum presents diverse and important temporary exhibitions that range from classical Asian art to challenging work by today's artists. The exhibition program also includes changing installations that highlight the richness and scope of the museum collections, as well as the MATRIX Program for Contemporary Art, presenting recent avant-garde work. BAM has mounted important exhibitions of the works of Juan Gris, Jay DeFeo, Robert Colescott, Joan Brown, Robert Mapplethorpe, Sebastião Salgado, Paul Kos, and many others. The museum is well known for such thematic exhibitions as Anxious Visions: Surrealist Art; Made in U.S.A.: An Americanization in Modern Art, the '50s & '60s; The Here and the Hereafter: Images of Paradise in Islamic Art; Hogarth and His Times: Serious Comedy; and Masterworks of Chinese Painting: In Pursuit of Mists and Clouds."http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/about/

Name: The University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive Location: 2626 Bancroft Way Web Site: [Web Link] Agency/Ownership: Public Gift Shop: yes Cafe/Restaurant: yes Phone Number: Not listed Hours of operation: Not listed Admission Fee: Not listed

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