Please join BAMPFA Curator’s Circle members for a preview reception and curator-led tour of the important and compelling exhibition Cal Conversations / About Things Loved: Blackness and Belonging.  

Historically, Black culture and museum institutions often have had a negative relationship, including the theft of cultural objects, the appropriation of styles, and the devaluation of skilled practices, as well as the marginalization and exclusion of Black artists from exhibitions and collections. Museums have been implicated in practices that present racial difference as biological fact rather than social construction, and which work to exclude, marginalize, and devalue Black art, Black artists, and Black life. Recognizing this, About Things Loved: Blackness and Belonging centers on a diverse array of Black art in the hope of addressing these questions: To whom does blackness belong? Where does blackness belong? How can blackness belong within the museum?

This exhibition highlights the artworks and intergenerational relationships of numerous artists and foregrounds the richness and diversity that becomes visible when blackness is taken as the norm rather than the exception, proposing the museum as a space of care for relationships of justice, equity, and inclusion. Featured artists include Romare Bearden, Girma Berta, Chakaia Booker, Peter Bradley, Erica Deeman, Charles Gaines, Mildred Howard, Lyle Ashton Harris, Margo Humphrey, Julie Mehretu, Kamau Amu Patton, Faith Ringgold, William Rogers, Betye Saar, Raymond Saunders, Lorna Simpson, Hervé Télémaque, Kara Walker, Carrie Mae Weems, Charles White, Fred Wilson, and others.

Curator’s Circle members will join participating artists and graduate students for a reception in BAMPFA's Babette cafe to celebrate the opening of the exhibition and the culmination of a thought-provoking course. Associate Professors Lauren Kroiz and Leigh Raiford will lead a fascinating tour of the exhibition and share highlights, challenges, and insights from the process of conceiving and planning this exhibition with their students.

Space is limited, and reservations will be made on a first come, first served basis. Reserve your spot today, or contact Jennifer Sime at 510-643-9632; jlsime@berkeley.edu with any questions.

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About Things Loved: Blackness and Belonging is the third in BAMPFA's annual exhibition series Cal Conversations. It is organized by students in the UC Berkeley graduate seminar Diaspora | Migration | Exile, with Associate Professors Lauren Kroiz and Leigh Raiford, co-taught through the Department of History of Art and the program in African Diaspora Studies. The exhibition was developed, in part, with a generous grant in support of art history graduate education and curatorial training from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.