BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA.- The University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAM/PFA) is delighted to offer free gallery admission, exhibition tours, and film screenings on the first Thursday of each month. Generously sponsored by Gap Inc., First Impressions: Free First Thursdays at BAM/PFA will bring the museum and archive’s films and exhibitions to a wider public by offering a special free sampling of art and film every month.

"We are delighted to be a part of BAM/PFA’s efforts to make art and film available to all community residents," says Steve Barton, Director, Gap Foundation. "BAM/PFA has demonstrated a consistent and ongoing commitment to reaching every part of the Bay Area public. We applaud that commitment and are delighted that our gift will contribute to its continued success."

Each month, First Impressions will make it possible for visitors to tour BAM/PFA’s exhibitions and encounter the work of artists, filmmakers, curators, and scholars who shape our cultural landscape. In November, the Pacific Film Archive will present a free twilight screening of a film by acclaimed documentarian Kim Longinotto, and in December, a movie by the renowned Japanese filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu, whose films will be shown in a major series in November and December. In the BAM galleries there will be free tours of the ground-breaking exhibition Gene(sis): Contemporary Art Explores Human Genomics, in which artists from around the world take a thoughtful and provocative look at the world of gene experimentation. Other exhibitions on view at First Impressions will include Exhibiting Signs of Age, an exploration of how aging and the elderly are represented in art, and new installations by Helen Mirra and acclaimed Bay Area artist Jim Campbell.