• Theresa Cha: Performance documentation of Aveugle Voix, 1975; black-and-white photograph; BAMPFA, gift of the Theresa Hak Kyung Cha Memorial Foundation. Photo: Trip Callahan.

  • Theresa Cha at the window of her Berkeley apartment, 1979. Photo: James Cha.



Teatime Thursday: Claire Frost on Theresa Hak Kyung Cha Collection

Open to Curator’s Circle members at the $1,000 level and above.

Please join us for Mirrored Motions: The Theresa Hak Kyung Cha Collection, a conversation with Curatorial Assistant Claire Frost.

Over the course of her tragically short life, Korean American artist Theresa Cha (1951–1982) produced a profoundly compelling body of work that includes films, artist’s books, performances, and concrete poetry. In 1992, because of Cha’s many connections to UC Berkeley and BAMPFA, a gift from the Theresa Hak Kyung Cha Memorial Foundation brought her art and archives into BAMPFA’s collection and established the museum’s Conceptual Art Study Center. Today this collection of Cha’s work receives three times as many research requests as all BAMPFA’s other collection materials combined. With a focus on BAMPFA's institutional history, this talk considers the organization of the Theresa Hak Kyung Cha Collection and the ways that scholars, artists, and the public engage with it. In particular, it addresses how this engagement intersects with Cha’s identity as a Korean American and the practices of conceptual art to examine how inclusion and exclusion manifest within art history.

Curatorial Assistant Claire Frost has worked in the Bay Area since 2011, including positions at both the Contemporary Jewish Museum and ArtSpan. She earned a master’s degree in modern and contemporary art history, theory, and criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where her studies focused on the intersection of identity and historiography and the documentation of artists’ communities. This research allowed her to blend an interest in archival materials with theories of information distribution and artistic practice and process. She is the cofounder and cocurator of the curatorial collective COLLABO, and she recently started an eponymous gallery in her San Francisco apartment.

This event is open to Curator’s Circle members at the $1,000 level and above. Space is limited, and reservations will be taken on a first come, first served basis. Registered participants will receive an email with a secure event link on April 16.

Please contact Director of Special Events Masha Berek at mberek@berkeley.edu for more information or to register.