In 1966, when the Berkeley Art Museum's first director, Peter Selz, was anticipating the opening of “a splendid new building” to house the University's art collection-which, at that time, was stored in the basement of Hearst Gymnasium beneath the swimming pool-he hoped that the collection would grow to encompass all areas of art, past and present. The stated aim of the new museum was to offer a broad range of objects “for study by the specialist, as well as allowing the undergraduate and the university community to experience works of art of outstanding quality and beauty.” The exhibition Kunstkammer,on view in the Theater Gallery, offers an opportunity to share a wide variety of works on paper collected by the Berkeley Art Museum since its inception, and by the University before that. Representing a span of four hundred years and multiple continents, an array of prints, drawings, and photographs are mixed throughout the gallery space, hung in a style reminiscent of a sixteenth-century Kunstkammer. Among the many pieces in the show are works by Albrecht Dürer, Paul Gauguin, Tom Marioni, Louise Bourgeois, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Rivane Neunschwander. The word Kunstkammer, which translated literally means art chamber, can be traced to Central Europe in the mid-sixteenth century, when it was used to describe private collections of paintings and precious artifacts presented as objects of scholarship and wonder. The early Kunstkammer often combined works of art with scientific apparatus and products of nature.
