There’s something special about UC Berkeley staffer Emeric Kennard’s artwork, as Kim Girard, a writer and news editor in the Berkeley Haas communications office, discovered when she recently tracked down the talented visual artist and illustrator for an interview that helps celebrate Pride Month.

In 1997 I walked into the Berkeley Art Museum to be greeted by a staggering sight: an array of some 20 quilts unlike any I had ever seen. Their unbridled colors, irregular shapes and nearly reckless range of textiles telegraphed a tremendous energy and the implacable ambition, and confidence, of great art.

The UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive has hired Julie Rodrigues Widholm as its new director. Widholm, who is currently the director and chief curator of the DePaul Art Museum, will begin at Berkeley on Aug. 1.

If necessity is the mother of invention, more than a few winners of the campus’s first-ever Berkeley Changemaker Technology Innovation Grants found inspiration in the teaching and learning challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Commemorated around the world as the day slavery ended in the United States, Juneteenth is a day to reflect on Black Americans’ vibrant culture, enduring resilience and rich history. But the words of iconic author James Baldwin remind us of a conflicting narrative: Slavery never ended for Black people in America.

This is a Pride Month unlike any other in recent memory.

We’re living in a time scarred by tragedy. This June, crowds won’t be pressing their way down Market Street to watch a parade. Instead, they are taking to the streets for another reason: to stand against the deeply rooted injustices and violence targeting the Black community.

For another year in a row, Berkeley Arts + Design awarded Creative Discovery Grants to Berkeley faculty seeking to develop new undergraduate courses or to enhance existing ones through creative, engaged, participatory learning te

ON APRIL 24, UC Berkeley’s production of Snowflakes, Or Rare White People was supposed to open at the 500-seat Zellerbach Playhouse. In the sci-fi comedy, black and brown women run a far-future America, while two of the last remaining white people are confined to an exhibit at the Museum of Natural History.

Berkeley is known globally as a center of academic excellence, attracting the best and brightest students from the United States and the world. But in every class, a small cohort of students are distinguished by their wide-ranging interests, deep commitment and, of course, hard work.

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