UC Berkeley Art Practice Dept.

Worth Ryder Art Gallery and the Department of Art Practice is pleased to present Rage Against the Dying Light, a group exhibition featuring artworks by students in the Spring 2026 Advanced Studio Critique Program. The works in this exhibition examine the persistent efforts required to maintain identity, memory, and community in environments of change and neglect through mediums of painting, sculpture, and installation. Through the steady, tactile acts of making through materials like hair, doilies, porcelain, and found objects, these 9 artists are using a variety of materials to represent the body, land and its multitude of transformations.  Please be sure to join us during the opening reception on April 1st, 2026 from 4pm - 6pm at the Worth Ryder Art Gallery.  Artists: Nailah Babatunde-Bey
Elisa “Ellie” Castro
Maddie Charlton
Thao My Duong Vo
Macyn Metten
Alyssa Marie Thomas
Mica Townsend
Félix Valdovinos
Bella Veale Exhibition dates: Wednesday, April 1 - Saturday, April 18, 2026
Opening reception: Wednesday, April 1, 2026, 4-6pm
Worth Ryder Art Gallery (AAPB 116) Anthropology & Art Practice Building, First Floor, UC Berkeley Campus
Near the intersection of College Avenue and Bancroft Way Hours: Tues/Thur 12-6, W 1-6, F 12-5
Special CalDay hours on Saturday April 18, 1-4pm @worthryder @ucberkeley_artpractice @ucberkeleyofficial #contemporaryart #bayareaartist #studentartists #berkeleyart #freeevent

Art Practice is saddened to share the passing of Mary Lovelace O’Neal on May 10, 2026 at the age of 84. Lovelace O’Neal joined the faculty of Art Practice as an Assistant Professor in 1979, and retired after an illustrious career in 2006. Over the course of her life, Lovelace O’Neal developed a singular visual language that was acutely personal and profoundly political. Drawing on a broad range of influences—from Minimalism to Abstract Expressionism—Lovelace O’Neal’s practice was at once worldly and philosophical, parsing social themes of race and gender while remaining fully immersed in conceptual and metaphysical investigations of joy, exuberance, nature, and the sublime. Throughout her six-decade career, Lovelace O’Neal produced a remarkable body of work—paintings, drawings, and prints, all reconciling the intimate and the monumental, the minimalist and the expressionist, personal narrative and collective mythology. Often working on a grand scale, Lovelace O’Neal was renowned for her keen sensitivity to color and unexpected use of materials. Her practice moved fluidly between figuration and abstraction—the suggestion of human, animal, and architectural forms often lurking beneath vivid, painterly surfaces—while enigmatic, often inscrutable, titles hinted opaquely at narratives never fully revealed. Lovelace O’Neal spent much the last 20 years of her life in Mérida, Mexico with husband and artist Patricio Moreno Toro. In 2024, the artist’s final body of work, The Mexico Works, debuted at Boesky Gallery in New York. With these monumental paintings—all made between 2021 and 2023—the artist mined the visual language she developed over her long career, iterating on the imaginative forms, innovative materiality, and inventive handling of color that characterize her oeuvre. Portrait of Mary Lovelace O’Neal. Photo: Aubrey Trinnaman Installation views, HECHO EN MÉXICO—a mano (MADE IN MEXICO—by hand), Boesky Gallery, New York. Photos: Lance Brewer Photos and text courtesy of Marianne Boesky Gallery.

This Friday at 6 PM: MFA Artists’ Talk at BAMPFA. 🎤 Hear from the 2026 graduates of UC Berkeley’s MFA program as they discuss their work with exhibition curators Omar Farah and Tausif Noor. BAMPFA’s Fifty-Sixth Annual UC Berkeley MFA Exhibition features work by graduating artists Zuhoor Al Sayegh, Eleni Maria Berg, Itzli OCIEL, Kristiana Chan 薧礼醑, Swaleha Masude, and Héctor Muñoz-Guzmán. It’s a chance to hear directly from these artists about the ideas, materials, and questions behind the work now on view. ✨ Tickets are required, and gallery admission is included with ticket purchase. Details are at the link in bio. 🎟️

Opening next week: The 56th UC Berkeley MFA Thesis Exhibition opens May 15! Join us at the Berkeley Art Museum Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) for the opening 4-5pm with reception and panel discussion after. Come celebrate these amazing artists and listen to them discuss their work with exhibition curators Omar Farah and Tausif Noor. Gallery admission is included with ticket purchase.

Opening next week: The 56th UC Berkeley MFA Thesis Exhibition opens May 15! Join us at the Berkeley Art Museum Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) for the opening 4-6PM with reception and panel discussion after. I’m so proud of the work my cohort has worked so hard to make over the past two years, come celebrate with us!

I’d love to invite you all to the opening of COUNTERMYTHS: The Fifty-Sixth Annual UC Berkeley MFA Exhibition at @bampfa , curated by @tausifnoor and @omarjasonfarah . Join us Friday, May 15th — opening reception from 4–5pm, with a group artist talk at 6pm. I’ll be exhibiting this new painting, Las Gemelas de South TepaBerkeley, alongside new works by @zuzart_ , @eleniberg , @kristi_chan , @swale.ha , and @351amm . Hope to see y’all there! Photos: @gottablastcharles

One more day until Tea. Dance., presented by SFAC Galleries and UC Berkeley Art Practice Department on Saturday May 2 at 4:00 P.M. 🍵💃🏽 🪩 Come celebrate the closing of “Dream Jungle,” while enjoying a lush retirement party in honor of artist and educator Al-An deSouza at SFAC Main Gallery! 💫 DeSouza’s decades-long career across pedagogy, fiction, and multimedia art has profoundly shaped contemporary discourse with wit, depth, and provocation. The party takes the form of a tea dance, once a genteel ritual of Victorian high society, that has since been reclaimed by queer communities as a celebration of daytime pleasure, collective joy, and radical visibility. 🗓️The evening opens with a live reading by deSouza, a special performance by adrian clutario, and a closing celebration inspired by the tea dance, an invitation to sip, swirl, and sway in a space where old-world frill meets raucous delight. This event is free and open to the public, and will be held at SFAC Main Gallery. It also marks the final day of “Dream Jungle,” our current Main Gallery exhibition! 401 Van Ness Ave. Suite 126 San Francisco, CA, 94102 Link in bio for more info

Join us on Thursday, April 30, from 4-6 pm at Worth Ryder Art Gallery for the opening reception for “Water Marks,” the Spring 2026 Senior Thesis Exhibition. The multidisciplinary artworks by this semester’s 30 graduating students trace visible and invisible imprints stained and etched by memory, time, survival and flourishing. Employing diverse media including sculpture, painting, interactive installation, animation, drawing, and textiles, these emerging artists move through currents of grief, friendship, migration, family and faith in search of connections with the past that may not have been experienced firsthand and forged futures not yet known. You’re invited to experience playful animations, captivating sculptures, multimedia paintings and drawings, immersive domestic installations and a performance at 5pm on opening night l. Each artwork invites viewers to reflect on their own journeys and take a glimpse at newfound perspectives. The exhibition will open April 30 with an opening reception April 30, 4-6pm at the Worth Ryder Art Gallery. During the opening reception, there will be a performance in the gallery at 5pm. The exhibition will close May 19 with a closing reception May 19, 5pm, following the Art Practice graduation ceremony. This exhibition features the work of: AceGarantine Ling (凌英卫), Adriana Caroline Casillas Bravo, Ahyeon Cho, Amye Louise Elbert, Angeliza Talampas, Ashley Michelle Spence, Ashley Sotelo, Blu McCormick, Catherine Vojta, Erin Tang, Graham Watson, Hannah Eastman, Harrison Huang, Irene Martinez, Isaac Jordan Neri, Isabella Damberger-Sheldon, Jacky Urbina Hernandez, Julie Kaliuga, Kenneth Gaerlan, Kristy Lê, Maddie Emmons, Madeleine Lorraine Surh, Mychael Imi Kama Loa Vittoria Mann, Nathaly Garcia Perez, Nora Rose Slaughter, Paris Ma, Rebecca Wei, Rossana Delrow, Simon Villaroman, and Tim Holt Exhibition dates: April 30 – May 19, 2026 Opening Reception: Thursday, April 30, 4–6 pm Location: Worth Ryder Art Gallery (Room 116), Anthropology and Art Practice Building, UC Berkeley Gallery Hours: Tue/Thu: 12–6 pm, Wed: 1–6 pm, Fri: 1–5 pm

THIS SATURDAY @qualiacontemporaryart Gallery Talk with Cathy Lu and Yulia Pinkusevich ‘Emergence’ at Qualia Gallery, Palo Alto, Saturday, April 25, 1pm Join us for a special conversation with Berkeley’s new ceramics professor @_cathyclu_ and Mills College at Northeastern painting professor @yuliapink , whose current exhibition Emergence is on view at Qualia Gallery. The discussion will be moderated by art history alumna and LA-based curator Patricia Cariño-Valdez @patriciacvaldez . Together, Lu and Pinkusevich will speak about the ideas behind Emergence, their individual artistic practices, and the experience of working as artists and faculty at a moment of profound change—both in the Bay Area art world and in higher education. The conversation will reflect on what it means to make, teach, and sustain creative work in a shifting cultural and institutional landscape, and how artists continue to shape new forms of community, critique, and possibility. Sparkling refreshments will be served and we hope you’ll stay and network/mingle with us after the talk.

We’d love to see you next Saturday at “Tea. Dance.” presented by SFAC Galleries and UC Berkeley Art Practice Department on Saturday May 2 at 4:00P.M. Join us for a lush retirement party in honor of artist and educator Al-An deSouza at SFAC Main Gallery! DeSouza’s decades-long career across pedagogy, fiction, and multimedia art has profoundly shaped contemporary discourse with wit, depth, and provocation. The party takes the form of a tea dance, once a genteel ritual of Victorian high society, that has since been reclaimed by queer communities as a celebration of daytime pleasure, collective joy, and radical visibility. The evening opens with a live reading by deSouza, a special performance by adrian clutario, and a closing celebration inspired by the tea dance, an invitation to sip, swirl, and sway in a space where old-world frill meets raucous delight. This event is free and open to the public, and will be held at SFAC Main Gallery. It also marks the final day of “Dream Jungle,” our current Main Gallery exhibition! 401 Van Ness Ave. Suite 126 San Francisco, CA, 94102 Link in bio for more info

BIZARRE BAZAAR IS HERE!!!

ANNUAL STUDENT PRINT SALE FRIDAY, April 17, 12-5PM SATURDAY, April 18 (CAL DAY), 11-5PM Anthropology and Art Practice Building rm 265 **CASH ONLY * wide variety of student prints including screen prints, relief, etchings, monotypes, cyanotypes and more!