Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive

Collection

Art

The museum was officially founded in 1963 after a donation was made to the university from artist and teacher Hans Hofmann of 45 paintings plus $250,000. A competition to design a building was announced in 1964, and the museum, designed by Mario Ciampi, and associates Ronald Wagner and Richard Jurasch, opened in 1970. 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. He was succeeded by James Elliott, who served as director until 1988.

The museum has shown the works of Ant Farm, Joe Brainard, Joan Brown, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Robert Colescott, Jay DeFeo, Juan Gris, Eva Hesse, Paul Kos, Robert Mapplethorpe, Barry McGee, Richard Misrach, Bruce Nauman, Peter Paul Rubens, Martin Puryear, Sebastião Salgado, William Wiley, and many others.

The museum also features the MATRIX Program for Contemporary Art, founded in 1978 by James Elliott. MATRIX has featured artists such as Zarouhie Abdalian, Michael Armitage, Geta Brătescu, Cecilia Edefalk, Paz Errázuriz, Nicole Eisenman, Myoko Ito, Anna Maria Maiolino, Otobong Nkanga, Will Rogan, Linda Stark, and John Zurier.

In 2009, the museum acquired (as a gift from the artist) 56 paintings and drawings from the Abu Ghraib Series by Fernando Botero. 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 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."

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. 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." Drawing on the larger collection, BAMPFA organized the exhibition Routed West: Twentieth Century African American Quilts in California (June 8, 2025—November 30, 2025) and published a book with the same title. On the eve of the show's opening, approximately $230,000 in conservation funds from an Institute of Museum and Library Services "Save America’s Treasures" grant was revoked by an executive order from Donald Trump, placing the museum and the collection squarely in the crosshairs of the Trump Administration's "war on woke."

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, Tiepolo, Guardi, Géricault, Juan Gris, Paul Klee, and Miró.

Film

The Pacific Film Archive (PFA) was founded in 1967 by Sheldon Renan, who began screening films on the UC campus in 1966 and was appointed Director of the new PFA. 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 18,000 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 Hans Hofmann, who was instrumental in the creation of the museum. Photo by Steven Saylor.

Buildings

File:BAMPFA entrance (cropped).jpg The former Berkeley Art Museum building was designed by Mario Ciampi and associates Ronald E. Wagner and Richard Jurasch and opened in 1970. The concrete Brutalist structure—one of the most inventive buildings in that style, with its fan-shaped procession down a spiral of semi-open galleries—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.

In 2008, BAMPFA unveiled plans for a new museum building, to be designed by the Japanese architect Toyo Ito and located in downtown Berkeley, across the street from UC Berkeley's main entrance. In 2009 construction of Ito's planned design was cancelled. Citing the weak economy and trouble raising necessary funds, BAMPFA decided to re-construct and enlarge (rather than completely 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 because of its role in the publication of the United Nations Charter.

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. Located at 2155 Center Street in downtown Berkeley, the building combines the shell of the pre-existing art deco 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 reopened 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 National Register of Historic Places in 2014. The building, seismically retrofitted and "reimagined", reopened in late 2021 as the Bakar BioEnginuity Hub, an incubator for biotechnology start-ups, named Woo Hon Fai Hall in honor of the father of a donor, David Woo.

References

References

1. (September 24, 2019). "Lawrence Rinder, director and chief curator of BAMPFA, to step down".
2. Libbey, Peter. (2020-06-25). "Berkeley Art Museum Names a New Director". The New York Times.
3. Charles A. Fracchia. (26 July 2011). "Francois Louis Alfred Pioche, San Francisco Banker and Financier".
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5. (2015-02-23). "Mission, Core Values, and History".
6. Loran, Erle. (1964-05-01). "Hans Hofmann and his Work".
7. (2014-12-22). "Hofmann by Hofmann".
8. [http://bampfa.berkeley.edu/about/mission BAM/PFA Mission & History]
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18. Lucinda Barnes, [http://archive.bampfa.berkeley.edu/exhibition/botero_2009 "Fernando Botero: The Abu Ghraib Series," September 23, 2009-February 7, 2010 exhibition notes.] {{Webarchive. link. (October 12, 2018)
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21. (October 16, 2019). "BAMPFA Receives Historic Bequest of Nearly Three Thousand Quilts by African American Artists".
22. Libbey, Peter. (2019-10-16). "African-American Art Quilts Find a Museum Home in California". The New York Times.
23. (October 7, 2019). "Rosie Lee Tompkins: A Retrospective".
24. Smith, Roberta. (2020-06-26). "The Radical Quilting of Rosie Lee Tompkins". The New York Times.
25. "Routed West: Twentieth-Century African American Quilts in California".
26. Yau, Elaine, et. al. ''Routed West: Twentieth-Century African American Quilts in California'', BAMPFA and DelMonico Books, 2025.
27. Karina Ioffee. (April 28, 2025). "BAMPFA loses federal grant to conserve its prized African American quilt collection".
28. (June 22, 2021). "The Enduring Mark: Six Centuries of Drawing from the Gray Collection".
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45. (April 28, 2016). "BAMPFA Thrives in its First Few Months in its New Downtown Berkeley Home".
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47. "Bakar BioEnginuity Hub".
48. King, John. (December 9, 2021). "A brutalist icon in Berkeley is reborn as a bioresearch hub". San Francisco Chronicle.
49. Rodríguez, José. (December 19, 2011). "Hong Kong businessman honors father, Woo Hon Fai, with major gift to UC Berkeley". University of California, Berkeley.