: report
It’s been a challenging few years in the Bay Area art world. There’s
been the shuttering or scattering of galleries from central locations.
The temporary closure (due to construction) of two of the area’s mu-
seums, including the anchoring SFMOMA. Artists getting priced out
of studio space. And so on. That is all making an extreme about face
this year, starting out with an incredible January, which was topped
off, on the last day of the month, by the reopening of the Berkeley
Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) in its new, spectacu-
lar home. (Earlier in the month the artist house museum of
David Ireland, 500 Capp Street, opened, and the San Francisco Arts
Commission introduced its new, much improved gallery location).
The excitement around BAMPFA’s new space was palpable leading
up to and including the opening, which saw lines around the block.
BAMPFA director Lawrence Rinder also noted that the institution
surpassed its $105 million capital campaign goal and the opening
night gala alone raised around $1 million.
The University Art Museum, as it was first named, opened in 1964 on
the UC Berkeley campus under the direction of former MoMA curator
Peter Selz (who has remained a fixture on the Bay Area art scene, and
whose fresh insights this magazine publishes to this very day). Within
six years, it moved off campus to a new space: the bold and well-
loved Brutalist-style building designed by Mario Ciampi. However,
the Bay Area being the shifty place it is, in 1997, the structure was
deemed seismically unsound. The hunt was on for a new home,
which was finally decided on in 2010, and BAMPFA closed the
doors of the Ciampi building at the end of 2014 to relocate.
BAMPFA’s new space, designed by internationally recognized archi-
tectural firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro—who are also responsible for
the ICA Boston, the expansion of MOMA, and the recently opened
Broad Museum in LA, among other notable structures—is in many
ways the opposite of its predecessor. Where the Ciampi was heavy—
made of rough, grey concrete slabs, exposed inside and out—the
new space is light, with a lot of traditional white, and features clean,
smooth lines. Where the interior of the old space had a loud visual
voice, the DS+R building stands back; as Rinder points out, the cur-
rent galleries are intentionally neutral, allowing the artwork to take
center stage, and it does. Reduced, but intentionally not gone—an
homage to the Ciampi—are the old building’s open sightlines. But
where the former museum was so open inside it could be distracting,
the current configuration provides both focused moments and the
ability to look across spaces. To add icing to the cake, the new
museum is also situated in a more easily accessible location, just
a block from the Downtown Berkeley BART station.This new structure was not without unique challenges. First was
the melding of old with new: for its relocation, BAMPFA was provided
the late-1930s Art Deco–style UC Berkeley printing plant, but the
museum required additional space. This was achieved in two ways:
a second floor was dug out under the existing structure; and there is
an addition, which spills off to one side and looks somewhat like a
twisted rectangle. The movement of the biomorphic new construc-
tion—which also creates interesting curved spaces inside—plays38 art ltd - March / April 2016BERKELEY
After years of planning, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive gets a new home.