Art professor on table
Visual arts animates all corners of our campus and is part of many interdisciplinary projects in research, education, and public engagement. Explore Berkeley’s campus programs where teaching, analysis, creation, exhibition, and presentation of visual arts are core activities.

Academics

Art Practice

Art Practice provides critical, conceptual, and skill-based learning across diverse disciplines, including digital media, ceramics, drawing, installation, painting, performance, photography, printmaking, sculpture, social practice, and video.

History of Art

The UC Berkeley History of Art Department includes distinguished faculty who work on a wide range of historical periods, geographic regions, and methodologies. The Department offers rigorous and well-regarded undergraduate and graduate programs.

School of Journalism

The Graduate School of Journalism teaches the skills required to produce stories in the public interest, through photojournalism, documentary film, audio storytelling and multimedia. Alums have won virtually every major industry award and steer the country's top news organizations.

Centers

Arts Research Center

The Arts Research Center is a think tank for the arts. It acts as a hub and a meeting place, a space for reflection where artists, scholars, curators, and civic arts leaders from a variety of disciplines can gather and learn from one another.

Berkeley Art Studio

The Berkeley Art Studio is the hub over co-curricular art-making on campus. Registration is open to UC Berkeley students, faculty, and staff, as well as the entire community. We offer classes in ceramics, photography, drawing, painting, design, and printmaking. The Studio has a rich history of providing quality art instruction taught by our staff of professional artists and is a welcoming place for students and artists at a variety of skill levels.

Townsend Center for the Humanities

The Townsend Center for the Humanities fosters innovative work in the arts, humanities, and interpretive social sciences. The Center sponsors rich public programming, offers fellowship and grant support, and leads interdisciplinary academic initiatives.

Venues

Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive

The UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) is the visual arts center of UC Berkeley presenting more than 20 art exhibitions and 450 films annually. BAMPFA's mission is to inspire the imagination and ignite critical dialogue through art and film.

Berkeley Natural History Museums

A consortium of the natural history collections and field reserves at the University of California, Berkeley, they represent the integration of historic biological and cultural repositories and cutting edge informatics and research. Together, the six natural history museum collections represent over 12 million voucher specimens in anthropology, botany, entomology, herpetology, mammalogy, ornithology, and paleontology. 

Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology

With over 3.8 million objects from around the world spanning 2 million years, the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology produces engaging and timely exhibitions, cultural programs, and training opportunities for campus and community members of all ages.

Platform

Platform is a project space ran by the Department of Art Practice on the UC Berkeley campus. Platform facilitates dialogue between students across campus, encourages artistic conversations and cultural production, and is a site for civic engagement and participatory action. Platform curates workshops, events, and exhibitions by and for the greater UC community and beyond. Some projects are initiated by the Platform curatorial board, while others are selected through an application process.

The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life

The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life is one of the world's preeminent Jewish collections in a university setting, and provides highly innovative and accessible resources about the Jews in the Global Diaspora and the American West to both researchers and visitors.

UC Botanical Garden at Berkeley

The 34-acre UC Botanical Garden is one of the most diverse landscapes in the world with over 10,000 types of plants, including many rare and endangered species. Organized geographically, the Garden features 9 regions of naturalistic plantings from around the world, including a major collection of California native plants. The Garden was established in 1890 and this living collection provides invaluable resources for international research and conservation, as well as a beautiful place of tranquility.

University Libraries

The UC Berkeley Library connects students and scholars to the world of information and ideas. With a daily commitment to excellence and innovation, the libraries select and create, organize and protect, provide and teach access to resources that are relevant to our campus programs and pursuits. The Library consists of twenty-three libraries and special collections. 

Valley Life Sciences Building

The Valley Life Sciences Building (VLSB) was 1 of 4 building projects (Life Sciences Building, Life Sciences Addition, Koshland Hall, North West Animal Facility) undertaken to revitalize the biological sciences on the UC Berkeley Campus. The VLSB was the most ambitious. It was constructed in 1930—considered to be state-of-the-art—and was completely gutted and reconstructed on the interior.

The reorganization eliminated 11 traditional departments, (Botany, Biochemistry, Genetics, Zoology...) forming 3 new departments: Integrative Biology, Molecular & Cell Biology, and Plant Biology.

Worth Ryder Art Gallery

The Worth Ryder Art Gallery presents thought-provoking exhibitions of contemporary art, gives students experience installing and sharing their artwork, and serves as the social and artistic hub of the Department of Art Practice.

Student Clubs

ASUC - Arts and Design Groups

The Associated Students of the University of California is the official representative organization of students at UC Berkeley. Founded in 1887, it is one of the largest and most autonomous students' associations in the nation.  ASUC is  passionate about student voice and student self-governance on the UC Berkeley campus and throughout our communities.

BAMPFA Student Committee

The BAMPFA Student Committee works to connect students and the BAMPFA through outreach and events aimed at all parts of the student community. Each year, the Committee’s activities range from small film screenings, to spectacular multimedia parties for up to 2,000 students.
 

BARE

BARE Magazine is UC Berkeley’s premier fashion, lifestyle, and art publication.

Cal Literature & Arts Magazine

The Cal Literature & Arts Magazine (CLAM) is a bi-annual journal of poetry, prose and artwork composed of submissions from the UC Berkeley undergraduate & graduate student bodies in addition to expository articles on local art and culture written by CLAM staff. The CLAM staff and editors meet weekly to review submissions, and plan events and fundraisers.

Creative Applications to Life in Origami

Our members strive to learn how to fold simple to advanced origami (no experience required!), to be able to visualize the geometry of origami and be able to execute a diagram correctly, further learning how to "read" crease patterns.

DeCal

The DeCal Program (or just DeCal) is an aggregate of student-run courses at the University of California, Berkeley – here, students create and facilitate their own classes on a variety of subjects, many of which are not addressed in the traditional curriculum.
 

Exposure-Organization of Student Photographers

Exposure-Organization of Student Photographers (EOS) provides photographing opportunities and services across the campus. We offer free workshops of photo taking, post editing, etc. We do so to enhance members' abilities in photography and innovation.

Fashion and Student Trends

The purpose of Fashion and Student Trend is to provide opportunities for students interested in fashion or the fashion industry to learn from other students and experts in the field.  They hold a fashion show at the end of each semester, featuring student designers and student models. They strive to provide students/audiences with the experience of a real fashion show. They also invite experts in the fashion industry to talk about future career development and opportunities. 

Mirai Collective

Mirai Collective is a student-run, arts collective at UC Berkeley that arranges projects and events to showcase contemporary art, new media art, music, video, photography, literature, and apparel. 


 

Outlet

Outlet aims to build a unified arts community at UC Berkeley and open up access to all visual arts to both beginners and advanced artists, thus creating a centralized organization in which artists of varying interests and backgrounds can come together and grow creatively and socially.