Some Particular Heaven: Ideas of Utopia in the BAMPFA Collection

August 5, 2026–July 11, 2027

Some Particular Heaven: Ideas of Utopia in the BAMPFA Collection is a yearlong exhibition that invites visitors to contemplate spiritual, social, environmental, and political possibilities through artworks from a vast range of historical periods and places. This wide-ranging, multidisciplinary presentation of artworks from BAMPFA's collection considers utopia as an ongoing project rooted in the pursuit of social justice, and a future in which all have the resources to thrive.

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Installation view from Some Particular Heaven: Ideas of Utopia in the BAMPFA Collection, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA), August 5, 2026–July 11, 2027. Photo: Chris Grunder
Installation view from Some Particular Heaven: Ideas of Utopia in the BAMPFA Collection, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA), August 5, 2026–July 11, 2027. Photo: Chris Grunder
Installation view from Some Particular Heaven: Ideas of Utopia in the BAMPFA Collection, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA), August 5, 2026–July 11, 2027. Photo: Chris Grunder
Installation view from Some Particular Heaven: Ideas of Utopia in the BAMPFA Collection, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA), August 5, 2026–July 11, 2027. Photo: Chris Grunder
Installation view from Some Particular Heaven: Ideas of Utopia in the BAMPFA Collection, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA), August 5, 2026–July 11, 2027. Photo: Chris Grunder
Installation view from Some Particular Heaven: Ideas of Utopia in the BAMPFA Collection, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA), August 5, 2026–July 11, 2027. Photo: Chris Grunder
Installation view from Some Particular Heaven: Ideas of Utopia in the BAMPFA Collection, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA), August 5, 2026–July 11, 2027. Photo: Chris Grunder
Installation view from Some Particular Heaven: Ideas of Utopia in the BAMPFA Collection, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA), August 5, 2026–July 11, 2027. Photo: Chris Grunder
Installation view from Some Particular Heaven: Ideas of Utopia in the BAMPFA Collection, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA), August 5, 2026–July 11, 2027. Photo: Chris Grunder

Upcoming
Films
Upcoming
Events
Selected
Objects
Past
Films
Past
Events

Upcoming Events

Saturday, September 12, 2026, 11:30 AM–1 PM
Gallery + Studio / Lines That Connect: Pattern, Repetition, and Belonging

See how some artists use a series of small gestures to build complex and dynamic forms. Then experiment with cumulative mark making to develop your own pattern-based drawing.

BAMPFA

For ages 6–12 with accompanying adult(s).
Saturday, September 12, 2026, 2 PM
The Unlearning

Composer and musician Theresa Wong performs her 2009 song cycle The Unlearning—a reflection on Goya’s The Disasters of War—as a duo with violinist and vocalist Carla Kihlstedt, accompanied by visual projections by filmmakers Daria Martin and Mao Mollona.

BAMPFA

Tickets required. Gallery admission included with ticket purchase.
Select Wednesdays at 12:15 PM and Sundays at 2 PM
Exhibition Tour: Some Particular Heaven: Ideas of Utopia in the BAMPFA Collection
Some Particular Heaven: Ideas of Utopia in the BAMPFA Collection, highlighting how artists drew from spiritual, intellectual, and philosophical traditions to explore utopian ideas in their artworks.
BAMPFA

Included with admission.
Saturday, September 26, 2026, 1 PM
Contemplative Salt Bath

Artist Beatriz Escobar leads participants through a contemplative salt bath experience, drawing inspiration from her floating practice to invite reflection on alternatives to modernity’s paradigms of determinacy and solutionism.

BAMPFA

Included with admission.
Space is limited; first come, first served.
Sunday, November 8, 2026, 1 PM
Mapping Utopias

Educator, anthropologist, and community organizer Isa Prieto leads participants through a discussion and collective mapmaking activity exploring the idea of utopianism and the fragments of utopia that already live in our neighborhoods.

BAMPFA

Space is limited; RSVP required.
Saturday, November 14, 2026, 1 PM
Artists’ Conversation: Emory Douglas and William Rhodes

Emory Douglas and William Rhodes discuss their collaborative piece Revolution in Our Lifetime, featured in Some Particular Heaven, and unpack how art can foster solidarity, reimagine collective power, and help realize new political possibilities.

BAMPFA

Tickets required. Gallery admission included with ticket purchase.
Sunday, November 15, 2026, 1 PM
Communal Land Care with TERREMOTO and Test Plot

Landscape architecture design studio TERREMOTO and nonprofit Test Plot discuss their approach to radical communal land care that cultivates beauty and biodiversity, and explore the belief that ecological and climate crises require a repairing of kinship with our lands and a return to the commons and to care.

BAMPFA

Past Events

Select Wednesdays at 12:15 PM and Sundays at 2 PM
Exhibition Tour: Some Particular Heaven: Ideas of Utopia in the BAMPFA Collection
Some Particular Heaven: Ideas of Utopia in the BAMPFA Collection, highlighting how artists drew from spiritual, intellectual, and philosophical traditions to explore utopian ideas in their artworks.
BAMPFA

Included with admission.
Thursday, August 6, 12 PM
Curators' Tour: Elaine Yau and Tausif Noor on Some Particular Heaven

Curators Elaine Yau and Tausif Noor lead visitors through the exhibition, discussing how ideas of utopia have been tied to themes of redemption, transcendence, design, and social justice across cultures and history.

BAMPFA

Included with admission.

Past Films

Some Particular Heaven: Ideas of Utopia in the BAMPFA Collection

August 5, 2026–July 11, 2027

For centuries, artists across the globe have responded to the turbulence of their societies by imagining ideal worlds. In response to moments of crisis and human suffering, artists, writers, and scholars have drawn on the concept of utopia—a term formed from Greek words that literally translate to "no place"—and looked toward the potential of the future as a way to reckon with the problems of the present. Some Particular Heaven: Ideas of Utopia in the BAMPFA Collection invites visitors to contemplate spiritual, social, environmental, and political possibilities for alternative realities through artworks from a vast range of historical periods and places. From fifteenth-century European paintings and Buddhist hanging scrolls produced throughout Asia to contemporary photographs and installations, the works on view demonstrate how art has been central to envisioning better social realities, rethinking inherited narratives of...

This yearlong exhibition, occupying the lower-level galleries, is organized into thematic groupings that consider utopian thought within varied spiritual practices; present abstraction as a form of contemplation and transcendence; examine design as a method for realizing utopian visions; and survey works from the late 1960s to the present that demonstrate how artists and activists have sought to collectively transform social dynamics. This wide-ranging, multidisciplinary presentation of artworks from BAMPFA's collection considers utopia as an ongoing project rooted in the pursuit of social justice and a future in which all have the resources to thrive.

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Some Particular Heaven: Ideas of Utopia in the BAMPFA Collection is curated by Tausif Noor, Assistant Curator, and Elaine Yau, Associate Curator and Academic Liaison.