Campus musicians receive gift from pianist Earl Hines' estate
The gift to the University of California, Berkeley, of the bulk of famous jazz pianist Earl "Fatha" Hines' estate will provide exceptionally gifted low-income students with free musical instruction and the campus's music library with his collection of papers, compositions and memorabilia. Hines' musical archive will become the cornerstone at the Jean Gray Hargrove Music Library of a new Archive of African American Music, which would be unique on the West Coast.
(08 December)

Art museum project alternate plan due early next year
UC Berkeley’s plans for a new Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAM/PFA) are being modified due to lingering economic uncertainty, museum and university officials announced today (Wednesday, Nov. 18).
(18 November)

BAM/PFA kicks off edgy Friday night series
L@TE nights at Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive aim to bring in fresh energy with outside-the-box programs organized by guest curators. The new Friday evening series begins Nov. 6.
(06 November)

Scholar of native textiles to head anthropology museum
Anthropologist Mari Lyn Salvador, a scholar of Panama’s native Kuna people and the textiles that they create and an experienced museum professional, has been named director of the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology at the UC Berkeley. Salvador is scheduled to take the new post in late November.
(05 November)

Ken Ueno premieres new composition
Composer and assistant professor of music Ken Ueno said the audience at Monday's San Francisco premiere of his new musical composition, "Archaeologies of the Future," heard sounds they likely never heard before.
(04 November)

A zombie invasion
The post-9/11 proliferation of zombie movies tells us a lot about society's fears — and gives us a safe place to experience them. Now zombies are giving way to vampires, and students in the "Monster Movies" media studies class are learning why.
(27 October)

The Wizard of Odd
Making music goes far beyond putting notes together to create pleasing sounds for saxophonist and composer Wayne Shorter, who prefers to think of himself as a "decomposer, someone who takes things apart." Shorter and his acoustic quartet will dismantle Zellerbach Hall when they perform there Oct. 17.
(15 October)

Fernando Botero exhibit exploring Abu Ghraib abuses opens at Berkeley Art Museum
An exhibition of 56 powerful paintings and drawings by Colombian artist Fernando Botero about abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq opens Wednesday, Sept. 23, at the University of California, Berkeley's Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAM/PFA).
(17 September)

Bancroft's Darwin exhibit taps campus's museum, library collections
An exhibit revealing what inspired and challenged the world's best known biologist, Charles Darwin, is now open at the University of California, Berkeley's Bancroft Library in celebration of the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth. The Bancroft joins a worldwide commemoration not only of Darwin's bicentenary, but of the 150th anniversary of the publication of his landmark book, "The Origin of Species."
(17 September)

Simon Karlinsky, scholar of Russian classic and émigré literature, dies at 84
Simon Karlinsky, a University of California, Berkeley, professor of Slavic languages and literature and a pioneering scholar of Russian classic and émigré literature, died in his Berkeley home on July 5 of congestive heart failure. He was 84.
(28 July)

Linguists attending international institute
Hundreds of linguists from around the world are gathering at the University of California, Berkeley, through Aug. 13 to weigh thorny issues such as where grammar comes from, what infants learn before they talk, what DNA says about how related languages spread, and the "linguistically modern man."
(13 July)

Betty Connors, longtime director of Cal Performances' predecessor, dies at 92
Betty Connors, who for 35 years led the UC Berkeley performing arts organization that ultimately became Cal Performances, died on Thursday, June 11, at her home in Richmond. She was 92.
(15 June)

A summer's worth of science writing
The annual Summer Reading List is a Berkeley tradition. Entering freshmen (and the rest of us) stock our beach bags with books recommended by campus staff and faculty — this year, on the theme of science.
(12 June)

Three faculty members elected to American Philosophical Society
Three University of California, Berkeley, faculty members have been elected to the American Philosophical Society, the nation's oldest learned society comprised of nearly 1,000 eminent scholars from a broad range of disciplines.
(01 June)

Matías Tarnopolsky new director of Cal Performances
Robert Birgeneau, chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley, today (Wednesday, May 20) announced the appointment of Matías Tarnopolsky as director of Cal Performances. The announcement was made at a press conference in Zellerbach Hall on the UC Berkeley campus.
(20 May)

'Passion and romance and love'
A new Berkeley Art Museum exhibit showcases the work of six artists grappling with the power of their media to effect social change.
(01 May)

Bravo, maestro, bravo!
Longtime Cal Performances director Robert Cole, who will step down this August, announces the arts organization's 2009-10 season. The arts impresario also reflects on some of his favorite events during his 23 years at Cal Performances' helm.
(23 April)

Plugging away at the riddle of consciousness
Over the course of his 50 years on campus, John Searle — among Berkeley's most distinguished and engaged public intellectuals — has explored the philosophy of language, to worldwide renown. He's also gotten in some skiing.
(23 April)

New Mark Twain book hits store shelves
As a collection of 24 previously unpublished works by Samuel Clemens – aka Mark Twain – hits bookstore shelves, the general editor of the Bancroft Library's Mark Twain Papers & Project says Clemens is very much still worth reading.
(21 April)

Four professors become arts and sciences academy fellows
Four UC Berkeley professors are among the latest leaders in the arts, humanities and sciences named fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences today (Monday, April 20).
(20 April)

JUDITH BUTLER: Thinking critically about war
A leading voice in the developing intellectual field of critical theory has received a $1.5 million Mellon Foundation award that she’ll use to create a “Thinking Critically About War” program at Berkeley.
(02 April)

Japanese architect Toyo Ito to visit campus
Acclaimed Japanese architect Toyo Ito will visit the UC Berkeley campus this month to discuss contemporary Japanese architecture and to attend an open house about the new Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive, which he designed.
(02 April)

Judith Butler wins Mellon Award
Judith Butler, a UC Berkeley professor of comparative literature and rhetoric, is a winner of the 2008 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Distinguished Achievement Award.
(19 March)

Never the Twain shall print?
Though held back from publication by Twain himself, these varied pieces, his anthologizer says, are “well crafted, clear, and wickedly funny.”
(19 March)

New Mark Twain book offers fresh insights into author
Fans of another famous author, Samuel Langhorne Clemens, best known by his pen name, Mark Twain, will likely be lining up for "Who is Mark Twain?" – an intriguing collection of two dozen previously unpublished sketches and essays by Twain that will be in bookstores on April 21. The materials come from The Mark Twain Papers and Project at UC Berkeley.
(17 March)

Paint, video, Etch A Sketch — this artist's media are varied and many
Grad-student artist Miguel Arzabe explores his complicated appreciation of nature using a wide assortment of media — paint, video, laser etchings, online social-networking tools, public enactments and installations, and the Etch A Sketch.
(03 March)

Student photos of foreclosed home win Lange Fellowship
Photographs of possessions left in a Vallejo, Calif., home following foreclosure, an all-too-familiar contemporary event across the nation, have earned journalism student Rhyen Coombs the University of California, Berkeley's 2009 Dorothea Lange Fellowship.
(25 February)

What's cooking at the Library?
A tour through the most appetizing stacks on campus — the culinary collection in Berkeley's Koshland bioscience library.
(12 February)

A 'hot new journal' turns 25
Growing out of, and informing, the New Historicist movement, the journal Representations celebrates a quarter century of interdisciplinary work.
(05 February)

Japanese Studies Center honors Eastwood for "Letters from Iwo Jima"
Actor and director Clint Eastwood will receive the first-ever Berkeley Japan New Vision Award from the University of California, Berkeley's Center for Japanese Studies on Friday, Jan. 23, for his role in creating a new vision of Japan - particularly during World War II - through his award-winning film, "Letters from Iwo Jima."
(21 January)