The University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive is one of four museums nationally to be selected as a recipient of the first annual Disaronno Originale Photography Collection. The collection, which comprises a total of eighteen photographs by thirteen international artists, will tour each of the four participating museums-Miami Art Museum, Miami; UC Berkeley Art Museum; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; and the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York-through the end of 2001 in an exhibition entitled A Passion for Art: The Disaronno Originale Photography Collection.

The collection was created with funds awarded by Disaronno Originale, maker of Italy's most famous liqueur, for the acquisition of photographs by emerging artists, many of whom have not previously been included in museum collections. This innovative program, which was launched this year, is intended to support the acquisition of work by international artists. Curators from four museums were each invited to submit for consideration photographic works by contemporary artists. From this collection of more than one hundred photographs, the curators juried a selection of eighteen photographs by the following artists: Jennifer Bornstein, Tacita Dean, Saul Fletcher, Joseph Grigely, Anthony Hernandez, Craig Kalpakjian, Zwelethu Mthwethwa, Ernesto Neto, Kelly Nipper, Gabriel Orozco, Daniela Rossell, David Shrigley, and Vibeke Tandberg.

Following the exhibition tour, the collection will be divided and the works donated to each of the participating museums. The UC Berkeley Art Museum will receive a total of six photographs by four artists: Ernesto Neto, Tacita Dean, Joseph Grigely, and David Shrigley. Both Neto and Dean have been exhibited as part of the UC Berkeley Art Museum's acclaimed MATRIX Program for Contemporary Art (Ernesto Neto/MATRIX 190 A Maximum Minimum Time Space Between Us and the Parsimonious Universe is on view at the museum through April 15).
On April 4, A Passion for Art: The Disaronno Originale Photography Collection will open in the UC Berkeley Art Museum's Theater Gallery, and remain on view through April 18.

The BAM/PFA is the principal visual arts center of the University of California at Berkeley. One of the largest university art museums in the United States with approximately 31,000-square-feet of exhibition space, the museum opened the doors of its distinctive building on the south side of campus in 1970. In addition to a challenging schedule of art exhibitions including the MATRIX Program for Contemporary Art, the museum houses the Pacific Film Archive, which premiered in January 1971, and which remains one of the nation's most acclaimed and comprehensive film collections and exhibition programs.