New Berkeley Art Museum / Pacific Film Archive Opened

Last week, UC Berkeley's Berkeley Art Museum / Pacific Film Archive opened its new building to guest.  Thursday was the gala opening day for donors; Friday, opening day for students; Saturday for members of the Museum/Archive; and Sunday, a community open house. 

I visited the Museum on 30 January, Saturday and it was nice to see so many members and their families and friends exploring the space and artworks on display.  The place was full of excitement and high energy but the visitors didn't overwhelm the quite airy space.  Comparing to the old site, this one was slicker and had more conventional gallery layout, thus easier to mount exhibitions.  Because the Museum did not exhibit their usual collections at the opening exhibition, it was hard to gauge how much the exhibition space had changed.  Once the the permanent collections are back, visitors might be able to understand it better.

















The initial exhibition had many exciting works and here are a handful of the highlights:



Architecture models






Macadamia wood bowl


Ruth Asawa


Solitary, semi-social mapping of ESO-510 613 connected with intergalactic dust by one Nephila clavipes - one week - and three Cyrtophora citricola - three weeks, spider silk, glue, paper, ink, Tomas Saraceno


Spider silk installation




4 Brushstrokes over Figure & 21 Brushstokes, Hyun-Sook Song


4 Brushstrokes over Figure, Hyun-Sook Song


21 Brushstrokes, Hyun-Sook Song


2 Brushstrokes, Hyun-Sook Song

In case one forgot, this picture below reminded people that we were in the quirky Berkeley:



There were two movie theater to showcase amazing collections of Pacific Film Archive (PFA) - one medium sized and a smaller one perhaps built for art house movies, in which I saw a wonderful short, featuring a woman in Baroque dress and modern sunglasses, running around in and around fountain and gardens, underneath an extravagant hat of a fountain:



A very promising beginning.

On Sunday, it was reported that some UC Berkeley students protested at the museum, "protesting the campus’s decision to designate funds to the creation of an art museum rather than to increase benefits for campus workers."

I do support some of their arguments; yet, I cannot agree with their Leninist and Maoist approach. Universities have societal obligations to stimulate minds and art museum is one of the very useful tools for such an endeavor.


Other Related posts on Art · 文化 · Kunst:
- New Berkeley Art Museum / Pacific Film Archive Readying for Opening
- BAM/PFA New Building Topping Out Celebration
- Farewell, Berkeley Art Museum (BAM) at Bancroft Way
- Berkeley Art Museum Closed Its Bancroft Way Site
- Casualty of the Economy - Berkeley Art Museum's new building by Toyo Ito
- Lovely Sight at Berkeley Art Museum (BAM)
- Getting Ready for Barry McGee at Berkeley Art Museum
- In Berkeley Art Museum, California
- Recent Exhibitions at Berkeley Art Museum
- Silke Otto-Knapp at Berkeley Art Museum