Location:
Museum Galleries
2626 Bancroft Way
PFA Theater
2575 Bancroft Way near Bowditch Street
General information (24-hour): (510) 642-0808
Website: http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/main.html
INFORMATION / COLLECTIONS / EXHIBITIONS:
Founded with the legacy of 47 paintings from Hans Hofmann, the museum now has a PERMANENT COLLECTION of nearly 7,000 paintings, sculpture, and works on paper.
The collection includes: Early twentieth-century masters such as Fernand Leger, Rene Magritte, Aristide Maillol, and Joan Miro; old masters such as Peter Paul Rubens, Giovanni Savoldo, and Giovanni Caracciolo; important collections of American primitive painting and early California landscapes; and a collection of European and American prints and drawings. Additionally, works by some of the major French painters of the nineteenth century, including Paul Cezanne, Paul Gauguin, and Pierre Auguste Renoir, are also held by the museum.
The museum collection emphasizes the late twentieth-century art, including works by Alexander Calder, Mark Rothko, Joseph Cornell, Clyfford Still, Helen Frankenthaler, Francis Bacon, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Nancy Spero, David Ireland, Betye Saar, and Nayland Blake.
The museum also houses an Asian art collection of paintings, drawings, woodblock prints, sculpture, and ceramics, primarily from China, Japan, and India.
The BAM/PFA's GALLERY EXHIBITION program draws from Western, African, and Asian cultures in all periods of history. The museum has presented exhibitions of such eminent artists as Richard Avedon, Jonathan Borofsky, Joan Brown, James Lee Byars, Francesco Clemente, Terry Fox, Robert Frank, Juan Gris, Robert Mapplethorpe, Edvard Munch, and Rosemarie Trockel. Major thematic exhibitions have included The Independent Group: Post-war Britain and the Aesthetics of Plenty; Anxious Visions: Surrealist Art; Made in U.S.A.: An Americanization in Modern Art, the 50s & 60s; Shadows of Mt. Huang: Chinese Painting; Africa Explores: Twentieth-Century African Art; and J. M. W. Turner: Works on Paper from American Collections.
The MATRIX exhibition program, strated in 1978, represents the museum's commitment to presenting new and experimental art. MATRIX has organized over 150 solo exhibitions, including Louise Bourgeois, Richard Diebenkorn, David Hockney, Jess, Raymond Pettibon, Jim Shaw, Cindy Sherman, Lorna Simpson, and Kiki Smith.
The PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE (PFA) is an international center for the exhibition and study of cinema, through its daily film and video screenings, collection, and study resources..
PFA has shown works of directors such as Japan's Yasujiro Ozu and Masahiro Shinoda, Greece's Theo Angelopoulos, Britain's Mike Leigh, China's Chen Kaige, Belgium's Chantal Akerman, and Mali's Soulymane Cisse.
Comprehensive retrospectives organized at the museum have explored the cinemas of Iran, Vietnam, Mexico, Portugal, France, Greece, India, Senegal, and the former Soviet Republics.
Guest speakers have included famous directors Michelangelo Antonioni, Stan Brakhage, Chantal Akerman, Akira Kurosawa, David Lynch, Werner Herzog, Michael Snow, and Wim Wenders. Also, cinematographer Sven Nykvist, writer Barry Gifford, film editor Walter Murch, theorist/filmmaker Trinh T. Minh-ha, ethnographer/filmmaker Timothy Asch, actor Toshiro Mifune and actor/screenwriter Buck Henry
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