Review: ‘Architecture of Life’ — opening show at new Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive

The opening of the new Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive in downtown Berkeley makes the vast collection of art, artifacts and films much more accessible to the community than in the past. But the museum didn’t leave behind the scholarship we expect from a University of California cultural institution.

The exhibit “Architecture of Life” (through May 29) comes with extensive labels on the walls and a hefty catalog. But it doesn’t attempt to define either architecture or life. That’s left to the visitors who explore the seven galleries in the university’s newly redesigned former printing plant at Center and Oxford streets.

The exhibit is meant to create a “pattern of life,” notes one catalog essay. But curator Lawrence Rinder, the museum’s director, said visitors shouldn’t expect a linear tour through the “enormous show. It’s a kind of wandering experience,” Rinder told one group before a preview.

Although the exhibit is meant to celebrate the new architecture (by Diller Scofidio + Renfro), the show expands the architecture category to include art, craft, devotional objects, scientific drawings, musical notations, acoustical charts, experimental videos and more. Even some paintings.

But none of these has the impact of the swooping new architecture, with its expansive windows and stainless steel “cape” over the building. A close contender, though, is a 54-inch tall gilt bronze Buddha from 14th century Tibet. (The connection to the exhibit is that the Buddha is touching a finger to the ground to signify his calling on the Earth to witness his enlightenment.)

The installations, spreading through the galleries and corridors, can seem unfocused, but one advantage is that there’s something for everyone: snowflake photographs, spider web “sculptures,” an astonishing panel, measuring about 4-by-5 feet, of 16th-century Italian lace, a 1907 drawing of liquid crystals, a Georgia O’Keeffe painting of a facade with a floating door.

Some pencil drawings and other works on paper are understandably dim, but the exhibit offers bold and colorful punctuation, often by Bay Area artists.

Six woven-wire hanging sculptures by Ruth Asawa, who lived in San Francisco, are spotlighted so their shadows bring another dimension to her artistry.

Rosie Lee Tompkins’ quilts add velvety texture to their geometric designs. They bridge art and life as healing meditations she made for friends. (Tompkins, who lived in Richmond, was also featured in a recent Oakland Museum quilt exhibit.)

The wood-turned bowls by former Oakland resident Bob Stockdale, so sensitive to the wood grain, and the “manhandled” clay pitchers by George Ohr all show the personal touch of their makers.

Among the paintings, Swiss artist Johannes Itten’s 1916 “Encounter” is a vibrant color study that seems far ahead of its time. Close inspection may reveal, as curator Rinder suggests, a shadowy human figure and a building morphing together into a double helix.

Fernand Léger’s 1912 study for “Nude Model in the Studio,” suggests it’s in league with Marcel Duchamp’s “Nude Descending a Staircase.” This sense of cubism-in-action gets a thorough examination in the scholarly exhibit catalog. It’s described as “a mosaic made of overlapping remnants of living forms as they pile up against one another in a kaleidoscopic assemblage.”

Visitors can decide how well these works fit the “architecture of life” theme and whether it matters.

One gallery on the museum’s lower level brings together parallel and contrasting “designs of life.” Asawa’s organic-looking wire sculptures fill one corner. California Pomo Indian baskets, their round coiled shapes sporting geometric designs, are arrayed in showcases. Buckminster Fuller’s 1951 proposal for a geodesic-dome hangar is nearby.

In the same gallery there’s an almost comic aside in three angular constructions by Al Taylor, made in 1985 from scrap wood, including picture frames, he found on the streets of New York.

“This work isn’t at all about sculptural concerns,” Taylor says in a posted comment. “It comes from a flatter set of traditions. What I am really after is a way to make a group of drawings that you can look around. Like a pool player, I want to have all the angles covered.”

“Architecture of Life” is only the beginning. In July the museum opens its next large-scale exhibition, “Berkeley Eye: Perspectives on the Collection.” It is planned as a 21st century version of the 1970 show that opened the former museum building on Bancroft Way (closed in 2014 because of seismic concerns).

There’s a wide-ranging schedule later this year: “Sojourner Truth, Photography and the Fight Against Slavery,” “Buddhist Art from the Roof of the World” and a tribute to Abstract Expressionist Hans Hofmann, whose gift of 45 paintings and $250,000 in 1963 launched the museum.