Talks & Conversations 2023

Five Tables of Art & Climate Change

What can art, architecture, design, and performance practices offer to current debates on climate change and environmental justice? This Five Tables presentation highlights artworks in the BAMPFA collection that reflect, mediate, and delve into the interconnected ecologies of life.

Artists’ Talk: Ester Hernandez & Catherine Wagner

UC Berkeley graduate Ester Hernández talks about her screen prints Sun Mad II and Sun Raid II, which address issues of migration and the overuse of pesticides and their impact on farmworkers, consumers, and the environment. Catherine Wagner discusses her work The Arctic Circle IV, part of a photographic trilogy in three distinct areas: scientific machines (Frankenstein), the Arctic Circle, and the history of science.

Curator’s Walk-Through: Victoria Sung on Duane Linklater: mymothersside

Join Phyllis C. Wattis Senior Curator Victoria Sung for a guided tour of Duane Linklater: mymothersside to learn about the artist’s multifaceted process of research and making, from 3D printing to using natural dyes like blueberry extract, dandelion, and charcoal.

Artists’ Talk: Masako Miki & Stephanie Syjuco

Berkeley-based Japanese artist Masako Miki discusses Ichiren-bozu (Animated prayer beads blue), a new work in BAMPFA’s collection that reflects her interest in reclaiming the power of myth making. Artist and UC Berkeley professor Stephanie Syjuco talks about her Raiders (Selections from the Asian Art Museum), a collection of flat, laser-cut, life-size images of antique Asian vessels downloaded from the Asian Art Museum’s online databases and adhered to wooden backings, investigating how we participate in the construction of culture.

California Live! in partnership with BAMPFA presents Alex Filippenko on Life, the Universe, and Everything

Join Alex Filippenko, UC Berkeley Richard & Rhoda Goldman Distinguished Professor in the Physical Sciences, for a wide-ranging conversation with California magazine’s editor-in-chief, Pat Joseph, as they explore such topics as the startling new images from the James Webb Space Telescope, the Great North American Eclipse of 2024, and the abiding mysteries of dark energy.

Julie Rodrigues Widholm on What Has Been and What Could Be: The BAMPFA Collection

BAMPFA Executive Director Julie Rodrigues Widholm, who organized What Has Been and What Could Be, offers a curatorial walkthrough of her new collection-based exhibition, addressing selected works from each thematic section, as well as sharing perspectives on curating from the museum’s collection.

MFA Artists’ Talk

Meet the 2023 graduates of UC Berkeley’s MFA program as they talk about their recent work at the outset of BAMPFA’s fifty-third annual MFA exhibition. This year’s artists are Irma Barbosa, Gericault De La Rose, Eniola Fakile, Juniper Harrower, Fei Pan, Tiare Ribeaux, and Samuel Wildman.

Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby and Vanessa Jackson on Alexandre Dumas’s Afro: Blackness Caricatured, Erased, and Back Again

Cocurators of Alexandre Dumas’s Afro, Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby and Vanessa Jackson, introduce the exhibition, which examines caricature, race, and the infantilization of Alexandre Dumas, the prolific author of The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo, among many other books. Why, they ask, is Dumas’s work so often celebrated in films, comics, and children’s books yet ignored by scholars?

ONLINE | Luis Camnitzer: The Ephemeral and the Permanent: Questioning Public Art

Complementing his new Art Wall project below/here/above/ahead/was, New York–based Uruguayan artist Luis Camnitzer offers a presentation designed to provoke thought and prompt questions about public art.

Curator's Talk: Karen Moss on by Alison Knowles: A Retrospective (1960-2022)

Join Karen Moss, guest curator of by Alison Knowles, for a special Curator's Talk marking the closing day of by Alison Knowles. Art historians and catalogue essayists Lucia Fabio, Hannah Higgins and Nicole Woods will also participate.

Lecture: Lawrence Rinder on Rina Kimche