Berkeley, CA, January 16, 2006-The University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAM/PFA) is proud to announce Measure of Time, a major collection-based exhibition exploring the concept of time in twentieth-century American art. The exhibition will highlight many key works from the BAM/PFA collection, each of which deal with aspects of time, temporality, and duration. The exhibition will be enhanced with important loans from other US institutions, and will be accompanied by extensive education programs and a film series. Measure of Time opens on February 22, 2006, and will run through June 24, 2007.

Time has become a fixation of modern life. As Western societies emerged into the Modern era, the management and measurement of time became increasingly important, not only to industry but also in daily life. Measure of Time examines the many ways in which leading American artists of the last century explored time, from static works that capture a moment in time or seemingly stop it altogether, to video and kinetic art in which the passing of time becomes an element of the artwork itself. In works ranging from Joseph Stella's Futurist-inspired Battle of Lights, Coney Island (1915 – 1918) to Shirley Shor's real-time digital projection Landslide (2004), the exhibition examines time as a malleable element that can be compressed, frozen, fragmented, mechanized, accelerated, and slowed down to an almost imperceptible pace.

Since its inception in 1970, BAM/PFA has taken a leading role in the exhibition and collection of time-based works, which have formed part of its important collections of film, video, performance, Conceptual, and installation art. Measure of Time will feature works from the BAM/PFA collection by Marcel Duchamp, Jackson Pollock, Robert Breer, Dennis Oppenheim, Joseph Cornell, Jay DeFeo, and Dan Flavin, and recent works by Jim Campbell, Ken Goldberg, Mark Klett and Bryon Wolfe, and Richard Misrach. The exhibition will also include loans of early-twentieth-century Modernist works, including Max Weber's Night and Joseph Stella's Battle of Lights, Coney Island from the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery at the University of Nebraska, and Stella's Bridge from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Measure of Time will remain on view for eighteen months, with works of art periodically rotating in and out of the exhibition. This extended timeframe will allow audiences to view, explore, and come to know parts of the museum's significant holdings in twentieth-century art, one of the strengths of its collection of more than 15,000 objects. Lucinda Barnes, BAM/PFA Associate Director for Art, Film, and Programs, and curator of the exhibition, says: "It is a special privilege to be able to present an exhibition that will remain on view over time. We hope this will allow visitors to come to know individual works and visit them over time, and through this get to understand the art and the exhibition more intimately."

Each phase of the installation will feature different works while emphasizing and expanding on themes in the exhibition and the accompanying programs. In spring 2006 the focus will be on the nature of time in twentieth-century art; in fall this will shift to examine early-twentieth-century Modernism in both art and film; and in spring 2007 the emphasis will be upon process and performance-based Conceptual art.

Measure of Time was curated by Lucinda Barnes, Associate Director for Art, Film, and Programs. It will remain on view through June 24, 2007.
Public Programs
Curator's Talk
Lucinda Barnes
Thursday, February 23, 12:15 p.m.
Gallery 5
Exhibition curator Lucinda Barnes will discuss some of the art, artists, and ideas featured in the exhibition Measure of Time.

Lecture and Discussion
Albert Pisano and Ken Goldberg
Sunday, April 23, 3 p.m.
Museum Theater
Known for his engaging, interdisciplinary lectures, UC Berkeley professor Albert Pisano considers how, from turn-of-the-twentieth-century mechanical timepieces to contemporary chip-scale atomic clocks, technologies of time measurement have influenced our understanding of time. Following Dr. Pisano's lecture, Ken Goldberg joins the conversation to discuss how artists have responded to these technological and conceptual revolutions.

Albert Pisano is chair of the Department of Mechanical Engineering. In 2002, he co-launched the Integrated Nano-Mechanical Regulated Atomic Clock project. He holds more than ten patents in Micro-Electrical-Mechanical Systems. Ken Goldberg is an artist and professor of robotics at UC Berkeley, teaching in the Departments of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. His work has been exhibited at the Whitney Biennial, the Venice Biennale, Ars Electronica, and BAM/PFA, among other venues.

Credit Line

The University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Institute of Museum and Library Services. Additional support is provided by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Koret Foundation, the Bernard Osher Foundation, Packard Humanities Institute, the Henry Luce Foundation, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Columbia Foundation, the Christensen Fund, the William H. Donner Foundation, San Francisco Foundation, Gap Inc., other private foundations and corporations, and our individual donors and members. Major endowment support has been provided by the Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation and by George Gund III.

Gap Inc. is proud to support First Impressions: Free First Thursdays at BAM/PFA. For more information about Free First Thursday gallery tours and screenings visit our website at bampfa.berkeley.edu.

University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
Located at 2626 Bancroft Way, just below College Avenue near the UC Berkeley campus.

Gallery and Museum Store Hours:
Wednesday and Friday to Sunday, 11 to 5; Thursday 11 to 7. Closed Monday and Tuesday.

Admission:
General admission is $8; admission for seniors, disabled persons, non-UC Berkeley students, and young adults (13 – 17) is $5; admission for BAM/PFA members, UC Berkeley students, staff and faculty, and children under 12 is free; admission for group tours is $3 per person (to arrange a group tour, call [510] 642-5188). Admission is free on the first Thursday of each month.

Information:
24-hour recorded message (510) 642-0808; FAX (510) 642-4889;
PFA recorded message (510) 642-1124; TDD: (510) 642-8734

Website: bampfa.berkeley.edu

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