Artist Call shares insights into the distinctive presence of American Sign Language in Martin Wong’s work.
Global Lives founder David Evan Harris, filmmakers Naomi Ture and Daniel Chein, and webmaster Benn Meyers (Shishin Junsei) present video clips and offer their perspectives on the project.
Guest curator Stein explores Miyoko Ito’s life and work and presents excerpts from a rare video interview with the artist.
Moletsane talks about her new Art Wall project with cultural strategist and curator Ekundayo.
Follow Martin Wong from the Bay Area to New York City’s Lower East Side in this discussion with Sean Corcoran, Yasmin Ramirez, Barry Blinderman, and Jane Dickson.
Art historian Berger explores Chen Hongshou’s enigmatic Buddhist paintings, which offer a glimpse into a cataclysmic moment in Chinese history. Followed by a discussion with Robert Sharf.
Two scholars present talks illuminating different periods in the work of Chen Hongshou.
The curator of BAMPFA’s Chen Hongshou exhibition offers insights into the artist’s mindset as the world around him dissolved into chaos.
De Jesus highlights some individuals from her collection of memorial portraits.
This program explores both the formative and the final years of Martin Wong, who began and ended his career in California. With Mark Dean Johnson, Julia Bryan-Wilson, Sergio Bessa, Marci Kwon, and Charlie Ahearn.
This panel offers an appreciation of the influential photographer Gordon Parks and a critical examination of the processes that shaped his first Life magazine photo-essay. With Makeda Best, Tina Sacks, and Ken Light; moderated by Leigh Raiford.
The curator of Gordon Parks: The Making of an Argument offers critical insights into Parks’s first photo-essay for Life magazine.
Join the exhibition curator for a talk about Miyoko Ito’s singular and compelling form of abstraction.
Lewallen discusses the life and work of Martin Wong—his identity, his milieu, and his passions.
Explore Charles Howard’s arresting art in this fresh, wide-ranging look at the themes and changing contexts of his work as he navigated among figurative, Surrealist, and abstract currents. With Apsara DiQuinzio, Douglas Dreishpoon, Lauren Kroiz, and Jeff Gunderson; moderated by Alexander Nemerov.
The artist discusses his current project for BAMPFA's Art Wall and his engagement with the natural landscape, his connection to the Bay Area, and the significance of language in his work. Watch the video.
The artist talks about his project THE VACANT AMERICAN and what he calls the “Vast Void of image making.”
The curator of Divine Visions, Earthly Pleasures explores the intersection of Indian painting and music.
The artist behind the world just makes me laugh talks about themes of wonder, sadness, and the sublime in his work.
Explore painter Charles Howard’s enigmatic work with the exhibition curator.
UC Berkeley’s new chancellor and the president of Deep Springs College come together for a discussion of timely issues in undergraduate education.
Get a behind-the-scenes look at the psychedelic art of the light show at this gathering of members of original performance groups as well as recent innovators.
Meet the 2017 graduates of UC Berkeley’s Master of Fine Arts program as they talk about their recent work.
Could rural communes be the template for a new geography of creativity? Ramón Sender Barayón, Erin Elder, and Fritz Haeg discuss the question along with moderator Greg Castillo.
MATRIX artist Contis talks about her photographs and shifting notions of place, identity, and gender in the American West.
Pell is a writer, angel investor, and founder of NextDraft, a curated compilation of daily news and analysis.
Hear from Pauline, founder of Survival Research Labs, and his wife, Critchett, the founder of Art+Audience and executive producer of Leo Villareal’s public work, including The Bay Lights.
MATRIX artist Kremen offers insights into his exquisite small collages.
Horn is host of KPCC’s The Frame. Washington is host and executive producer of Snap Judgment on NPR. Veltmanis an arts and culture editor at KQED.
Punk perspectives from V. Vale, a San Francisco cultural historian, writer, and keyboard player, and the founder of Search & Destroy and RE/SEARCH.
Emmy-nominated filmmaker Shlain is founder of the Webby Awards and cofounder of the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences. Selbak is a filmmaker whose credits include the film Three Veils and the Web series Kiss Her I’m Famous. Moderated by George Strompolos.
Fayette Hauser, Lauren Onkey, and Brontez Purnell talk about how reinventions of identity—reflected in rock music, performance art, and other flamboyant forms of expression—propelled the counterculture movement. Moderated by Juana María Rodríguez.
Get an inside view on the counterculture from Coyote, an acclaimed actor, Emmy Award–winning narrator of documentary films, and author.
Join pastor, author, and community activist Pinkard for a lecture and conversation about historical and cultural moments that form a “usable past” for New World Africans.
Programmed by Chika Okoye and David Brazil
Syjuco, Assistant Professor of Sculpture and Oakland-based artist, speaks about her work and its intersection with politics.
The previously scheduled lecture by Richard Koci Hernandez has been cancelled. We regret any inconvenience or disappointment.
Journalist and best-selling author Pollan and architectural and urban historian Sadler talk about the history and use of psychedelics in therapeutic, philosophical, and cultural contexts.
Pérez, an associate professor of ethnic studies and core faculty in performance studies at UC Berkeley, delves into the issues raised by Mendieta’s work and life.
Andrew and Deborah Rappaport founded the Minnesota Street Project to offer affordable and economically sustainable spaces for art galleries, artists, and related nonprofits.
Find the intersections between art and politics with Reed, a poet, novelist, essayist, playwright, songwriter, public media commentator, lecturer, and publisher.
New Orleans–based multidisciplinary artist and activist sumell reflects on her service with prisoners indefinitely held in solitary confinement, drawing from the teachings of the Black Panthers, Herman Wallace, and Albert Woodfox.
Anthony Raynsford, Bonnie Ora Sherk, and Lisa Uddin explore the radical geographies of counterculture politics in a discussion moderated by Sean Burns.
Explore avant-garde art practices with Beard, executive director of The Lab and former assistant curator at BAMPFA.
Join the artist of Silhouettes to explore the legacy of the portrait, physiognomy, and people’s desire to read the face.
Zimbardo is assistant curator of media arts at SFMOMA.
Miller, author of Blueprint for Counter Education, explores objects and publications that informed his defining work of Vietnam War–era radical pedagogy.
Cohen, an associate teaching professor in the African American studies department at UC Berkeley, talks about writer Thomas Pynchon, whose work embodies the radical challenge of the California counterculture.
Wortham writes about technology and culture for the New York Times. Ellis, associate professor of English at UC Berkeley, specializes in African diasporic, Caribbean, and postcolonial literatures and cultures.
Castillo, associate professor of architecture at UC Berkeley and guest curator of Hippie Modernism, maps the exhibition’s alternative cultural geographies.
Raiford, associate professor of African American studies at UC Berkeley, considers the role that photography played in the civil rights movement.
Greif covers popular culture and political thought for the journal n+1, which he cofounded. Williams is professor emerita of rhetoric and film and media at UC Berkeley, and the author of noted works of feminist film scholarship.
The first of four Hippie Modernism forums exploring the contemporary relevance of the Bay Area hippie legacy. With guests Lee Felsenstein, Fred Turner, Lynn Hershman Leeson, and moderator Greg Niemeyer.
Two luminaries of the Bay Area poetry scene come together to reflect on the Beat culture that flourished in San Francisco’s North Beach.
Guest curator Greg Castillo introduces the themes of Hippie Modernism: The Struggle for Utopia and talks about some of the works on view in the exhibition.
The Kramlichs are noted collectors who established the New Art Trust to advance the media arts through the support of research and scholarship in the field. Rinder is director of BAMPFA.
Explore the Left Coast with Boal, a social historian of science and technics and one of the founders of the Retort Collective, an association of radical writers, teachers, artists, and activists.
Butler is Maxine Elliot Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature at UC Berkeley. Nelson, a 2016 MacArthur Fellow, is the author of numerous works of nonfiction and poetry and directs the creative writing program at California Institute of the Arts.
B. Ruby Rich, Karen Fiss, Laura Pérez, and Raquel Cecilia discuss the filmworks of Ana Mendieta, on view in Covered in Time and History.
Boas kicks off our spring Big Ideas lecture series with a look at the modernist avant-gardes that influenced the California counterculture of the sixties.
An illustrated talk about the role of the book as a work of art in contemporary practice with Peter Rutledge Koch.