Views and Voices: Claire Ittner on Romare Bearden
At a time of distance, our audio series Views and Voices: Personal Perspectives on the Collection is designed to bring you closer to the individual people behind BAMPFA and individual works from our art and film collections. We’ve invited staff and students with ties to BAMPFA to select a favorite piece and talk about what makes it compelling or important to them.
Claire Ittner, a doctoral candidate in UC Berkeley's History of Art Department, explores Romare Bearden's collage Berkeley: A City and Its People, a work rich with local imagery, and describes her personal connection with it. Her dissertation studies fellowship programs that allowed Black artists to conduct travel and research in the 1940s and 50s. Ittlner holds a 2020-2021 Chester Dale Fellowship at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Romare Bearden: Final Study for Berkeley — The City and Its People, 1973; collage on board; 21 ⅛ x 32 ⅛ in.; University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; Gift of Dr. and Mrs. David Dragutsky.
