Monday, Aug. 14, 2023
Recently, OLLI members enjoyed a field trip to the Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive to explore the first retrospective exhibition of the work of longtime Bay Area artist Amalia Mesa-Bains, who has been heralded globally as one of the most prominent voices in feminist Chicanx art.
BAMPFA's associate curator of education Karen Bennett highlighted many of Mesa-Bains's gorgeous and moving pieces in a range of media — a decades-long kaleidoscope of contemporary innovations of sacred forms such as altares (home altars), ofrendas (offerings to the dead), descansos (roadside resting places), and capillas (home yard shrines).
This tour came on the heels of a recent OLLI speaker event we held with Mesa-Bains, which you can view here.
