I’m curating an exhibit for the Berkeley Historical Society, to run October 11, 2015–April 2, 2016, called “Art Capital of the West”: Real and Imagined Art Museums and Galleries in Berkeley. It was Jennie V. Cannon, an artist, who visited Berkeley in 1907 and wrote in her daybook, “I could not believe my eyes—there were artist groups and displays everywhere—so many fine artists that this place surpasses San Francisco as the art capital of the West.” As Berkeley town and gown look forward to the opening of the new Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive this winter, the exhibit will look back over more than 130 years of hopes, dreams, successes and setbacks.

Old Art Gallery, UC Berkeley, with WPA mosaics

Who knew that there was a Berkeley Art Museum back in the 1920s? That UC Berkeley’s third building, after North and South Halls, was built as an art gallery as well as the campus library? You may know about the “Old Art Gallery” at Cal, a brick building behind Sproul Hall that had been a power and steam plant before it became a gallery in 1934 with the help of art professor Eugen Neuhaus and art patron Albert Bender. The exhibit will feature the rocky history of the dream for a major university art museum that dates back to the generosity of Phoebe Apperson Hearst in the 1890s and early 1900s but took a long time to come to fruition.

I’ll also try to cover private and non-profit galleries, including the ACCI Gallery, Ames Gallery, Berkeley Art Center, Judah Magnes Museum, Kala Art Institute Gallery, and any others that come to my attention as having existed up to 25 years ago. Please let me know if you have relevant material to lend, other ideas, or would like to receive an invitation to the show.