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.

Saffron Sener is a fourth-year UC Berkeley undergraduate with a major in history and a minor in the history of art. She co-chairs the BAMPFA Student Committee, an organization that aims to engage Cal students with the museum via a range of activities.

Sener looks at Hans Hofmann’s painting And out of the Caves the Night Threw a Handful of Pale Tumbling Pigeons in the Light through the lens of its title, an evocative line from Rainer Maria Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus.

Hans Hofmann: And out of the Caves the Night Threw a Handful of Pale Tumbling Pigeons in the Light, 1964; oil on canvas; 84 1/8 x 60 1/4 in.; BAMPFA, gift of Hans Hofmann.