(Berkeley, CA) December 15, 2025—The Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive announced today the appointment of five distinguished arts luminaries to join its Advisory Board, along with the concurrent appointment of a new leadership slate. Joining the Board for the first time are landscape photographer Marion Brenner, filmmakers Cheryl Dunye and Jason Spingarn-Koff, branding executive SB Master, UC Berkeley professor and African art collector Scott Straus, and fashion designer and author Erica Tanov. In addition, current members Charmin Roundtree and Robert Riccardi have been appointed to serve as Board co-chairs.

“I’m thrilled to welcome Marion Brenner, Cheryl Dunye, SB Master, Jason Spingarn-Koff, Scott Straus, and Erica Tanov to BAMPFA’s Advisory Board, and to begin this next chapter under the leadership of our new co-chairs, Robert Riccardi and Charmin Roundtree. Their creativity, insight, and generosity of spirit reflect the best of what BAMPFA strives to be—a place where art, ideas, and community thrive. I’m deeply grateful for their commitment to helping us realize an inspired and ambitious future,” said BAMPFA’s Executive Director, Julie Rodrigues Widholm.

More information about BAMPFA’s newly appointed Advisory Board members and co-chairs follows below:

Charmin Roundtree / Advisory Board Co-Chair

Charmin Roundtree is the owner and founder of Art Is Luv, and has twenty years of experience as a Civil Engineer and over fifteen years as an art consultant and curator. She was appointed by the Mayor’s office to the Oakland Public Art Advisory Committee and the Cultural Affairs Commission. In addition to her City appointments, she is also a member of Creative Growth and the Recology Artist in Residency boards. Her passion and appreciation for art and community-based initiatives have been longstanding and have developed since childhood.

As an Oakland native and resident, she has been a witness to her hometown’s socioeconomic challenges and an active participant in its ongoing revitalization. As such, she values her role as both a stakeholder and collaborator. Currently she works as a community engagement and arts and culture strategist, consultant and manages large public art installations throughout the Bay Area. In this role, she provides input on design, budget, and execution, and engages with local artists, developers and community members. Her clients and collaborators also include city agencies and large nonprofits such as The San Francisco, Libra, Skyline, and East Bay Community Foundations, and host of others. She values her ongoing partnerships with local museums and other organizations that center artists, cultural workers, and visionaries who are reshaping paradigms that historically exclude underserved and underrepresented communities. 

Her work with emerging and established artists is a testament to her unyielding desire to maintain the lively and economically sustainable pulse of the place she calls home. 

Robert Riccardi / Advisory Board Co-Chair

For nearly twenty-five years, Robert led the venerable advertising agency Goodby, Silverstein and Partners (GS&P) in San Francisco and New York. As the agency's managing partner, he oversaw client management, brand strategy, communications strategy, analytics, and production. During his tenure, GS&P was the most awarded single agency in the US. Recognized as Agency of the Decade (2010) and Agency of the Year five times, receiving numerous Cannes Lions, most notably in the area of innovation. GS&P was also singled out as the most awarded agency in the United States for strategic effectiveness. Robert continues to guide and position agency start-ups while serving as an executive coach to marketing and advertising leaders.

Robert began his relationship with BAMPFA back when he was in school at UC Berkeley, attending art history classes under the guidance of Professor Peter Selz and film classes through the English department, taught by Bill Nestrick. Many days spent in the theater at BAMPFA on Bancroft solidified his passion for film and for the institution as a whole. Robert now continues that relationship with BAMPFA as the Chair of the Film Council and Co-Chair of BAMPFA’s Advisory Board.

Marion Brenner / Advisory Board Member

Marion Brenner is one of the leading photographers of landscape architecture. Her work has been featured in numerous books and publications, including Landscape Architecture Magazine, Gardens Illustrated, The New York Times, and Garden Design. Books of her photographs include Private Gardens of the Bay Area, Outstanding American Gardens, The Bold Dry Garden, New Garden Design, Living Land: The Gardens of Blasen Landscape Architecture, and In and Out of Paris: Gardens of Secret Delights. Her photographs are in the collections of the Bancroft Library at University of California at Berkeley, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and BAMPFA.

She completed her undergraduate degree in Art History from Wellesley College and studied Photography at the Boston Museum School. She received her M.A. in Visual Studies at UC Berkeley. She lives in Berkeley, California.

Cheryl Dunye / Advisory Board Member

Cheryl Dunye is a Liberian American director, producer, and writer who emerged as part of the "queer new wave" of young filmmakers of the 1990s. She has made over fifteen films, including Mommy is Coming, The Owls, My Baby’s Daddy, and HBO’s Stranger Inside, which garnered her an Independent Spirit award nomination for Best Director. Her feature film, The Watermelon Woman (1996), won the Teddy Award for Best Feature at the 1996 Berlin International Film Festival and was recently restored by Outfest’s UCLA Legacy Project for the film’s twentieth anniversary. In 2015, Dunye’s multi-award-winning short film, Black is Blue(2014), was named one of the top five “Must See Feminist Films” by IndieWire.

Dunye has directed many episodic series, including Ava Duvernay’s Queen Sugar, Dear White People, Bridgerton, and Lovecraft Country, for which her “Strange Case” episode received a Fifty-Second NAACP Image Award nomination for Outstanding Directing in a Drama Series and has been named one of the best episodes in 2020 by The Hollywood Reporter and Entertainment Tonight. In 2018, she launched her Oakland-based production company called Jingletown Films, which is actively developing The Gilda Stories, an adaptation of the beloved 1991 queer vampire novel by Jewelle Gomez; and the feature-length version of her award-winning short, Black is Blue.

SB Master / Advisory Board Member

Following her triple-major honors BA (Economics, Music, Book Design), SB began her career with a fellowship at the National Endowment for the Arts, followed by several years at the San Francisco Foundation where she conducted the first-ever study of the economic impact of the arts on the Bay Area economy, and was responsible for the Foundation’s arts and humanities grantmaking.

Following her Harvard MBA with an emphasis on strategic planning and marketing she joined Landor Associates, where she worked closely with founder Walter Landor, and was Associate Director, Corporate Identity Worldwide. After several years she launched the company’s first verbal branding practice across twelve global offices, leading work for numerous clients including Westin Hotels, Touchstone, Fleet Financial Group, Asiana, and Principal. 

SB went on to found and lead Master-McNeil, Inc., the pioneering naming firm, known for its hundreds of new names and brand architectures. Master-McNeil work has included extensive work with Apple as well as creating hundreds of names and brands across industries: PayPal, Planet Labs, Eos, Palantir, Athlon, Affirm, Cortex, Ariba, Concur, Pixo, ExpensAble, Navigant, Dentegra, Alliant, Members Mark, Traverse, and LaCrosse. 

Master-McNeil’s software spin-off Naming Matters, a UC Berkeley Skydeck company, applies natural language processing, artificial intelligence, and data visualization to decrease the cost and risk of new brand creation, selection, and vetting.

Jason Spingarn-Koff / Advisory Board Member

Filmmaker, journalist and media trailblazer Jason Spingarn-Koff is working to reinvent how stories about climate change are told, as Professor and the Knight Chair of Climate Journalism at UC Berkeley. Spingarn-Koff spent seven years as Director of Original Documentary Programming at Netflix, overseeing work that has transformed public perceptions of the natural world and our role in preserving it. From 2015 to 2022, at Netflix, he oversaw more than 100 global films and series, winning four Academy Awards for the company. Before that, he launched and oversaw the pioneering Op-Docs initiative at The New York Times, helping transform the media landscape for short-form documentaries, winning two Emmys and a Peabody Award. As a director, his debut feature Life 2.0premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. He is a graduate of Brown University and the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, a former MIT Knight Journalism Fellow, and is a member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.

Scott Straus / Advisory Board Member

Scott Straus is a Professor of Political Science at UC Berkeley; he currently serves as Chair of the department. Scott is a scholar primarily of political violence, in particular genocide, and of African politics. He has written or edited nine books and is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. His primary art interests lie in contemporary African art.

Erica Tanov / Advisory Board Member

Erica Tanov is a designer and creative visionary whose work spans interiors, fashion, and art. After studying at Parsons School of Design in New York, she launched her eponymous label in 1990, shaping a distinctly Californian vision of relaxed luxury rooted in timeless craftsmanship and the natural world.

A California native, Erica returned to Berkeley in 1994 to open her first store, later expanding to San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York. Today, her Berkeley Atelier continues that vision, bringing together design, artistry, and community. Her work has been featured in Architectural Digest, Vogue, Monocle, The Wall Street Journal, and Elle Decor, and her designs have been worn by Tilda Swinton, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Sarah Jessica Parker.

A committed supporter of the creative community, Erica also serves on the board of Creative Growth Art Center and has spoken at FOG Art + Design and Design Weeks in San Francisco and New York. She is the author of Design By Nature, a reflection of her enduring philosophy. Erica lives in Berkeley with her husband, musician and composer Steven Emerson.

About BAMPFA

Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) ignites cultural change for a more inclusive and artistic world. BAMPFA has been uniquely dedicated to art and film since 1970, with international programming that is locally connected and globally relevant. It holds more than 25,000 artworks and 18,000 films and videos in its collection, with particular strengths in modern and contemporary art and historical Chinese painting, as well as the world’s largest collection of African American quilts. As part of the University of California, Berkeley, BAMPFA is committed to artistic diversity through its robust slate of art exhibitions, film screenings, artist talks, live performances, and educational programs that shed new light on the art of the past and connect our audiences with leading filmmakers and artists of our time. BAMPFA sits on the edge of campus and downtown Berkeley, where it welcomes visitors from across and beyond the Bay Area in a repurposed building designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro.