BERKELEY, CA.- Lawrence Rinder, the director and chief curator of the
UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, announced today that he will leave the museum in March 2020. Following his departure, Rinder will continue to work with BAMPFA on a consulting basis. The University of California, Berkeley is launching an international search for Rinders successor that will commence immediately; BAMPFAs Chief Administrative Officer Richard Tellinghuisen and Senior Film Curator Susan Oxtoby will serve as co-interim directors during the transition period.
For more than a decade, Lawrence Rinder has been an outstanding leader of the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, amplifying the museums international reputation and deepening its public impact through programming that advances the highest creative and intellectual aspirations of UC Berkeley, said Chancellor Carol Christ. Larry has cultivated BAMPFAs role as an indispensable cultural resource for a diverse and growing audience, overseeing the museums transition to a beautiful new building and organizing critically acclaimed exhibitions that reflect both a deep sense of scholarship and an unwavering commitment to public engagement.
Rinders departure concludes more than two decades of service to BAMPFA, where he served as a curator, as well as assistant director for audience and programs, between 1988 to 1998 before returning to lead the museum in 2008. During his tenure as director, Rinder has overseen a period of exceptional growth and transformation for BAMPFA, beginning with the transition from its former home on Bancroft Way to a new building in downtown Berkeley designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro. Rinder led the fundraising and planning process that made the new building a reality, and he personally curated its inaugural exhibition Architecture of Lifewhich The New York Times cited as one of the best art exhibitions of 2016. Rinder has overseen a doubling of attendance to BAMPFA since its relocation, and has grown the museums membership program to more than 4,100 members. He has diversified BAMPFAs programming by launching new partnerships with independent arts organizations across the Bay Area, and has also overseen an ambitious acquisition program that has added more than 6,000 works to the museums encyclopedic collection.
I am deeply honored to have spent the past eleven years leading an institution that has contributed so much to Bay Areas arts community throughout its history, and which gave me one of my first professional opportunities as a young curator many years ago, said Rinder. BAMPFA has always been defined not just by its commitment to excellence but by its welcoming and inclusive spirit, a deep belief that art can transcend cultural boundaries and change the world for the better. Im proud to have advanced that legacy during my time here, and I know it will continue after Im gone.
After stepping down as director and chief curator, Rinder will continue to organize multiple exhibitions at BAMPFA through the end of next year, most notably a major retrospective of work by the quilt artist Rosie Lee Tompkins that opens in February 2020.