The most daring development in modern art in the first half of the 20th century was the step into abstraction—which elicited both excitement and anxiety. Painters looked to new sources for the kind of structure that observation once provided: from music to the logic of geometry, scientific developments to the forces of emotion and spirituality. Art historian David Gariff discusses the complex relationship between art and spirituality through works of Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, and their European counterparts Wassily Kandinsky and Piet Mondrian. (World Art History Certificate elective, 1/2 credit)
Join multidisciplinary artist Spencer Finch in conversation with curator Sarah Newman of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Finch, best known for his large-scale, site-specific works that explore changing landscapes, discusses his work and process as well as the ways in which environmentalism connects to what he does.
Puerto Rico, the Spanish-speaking territory of the United States, has a history shaped by conquest and resistance. For centuries, Puerto Ricans have crafted and negotiated complex ideas about nationhood. Historian Jorell Meléndez-Badillo offers a new history of Puerto Rico, providing a lens through which to understand the political, economic, and social challenges confronting its people—as well as the commonwealth’s intertwined relationship with the continental United States.
The New Horizons mission, which flew by Pluto in 2015, revealed a number of surprises: nitrogen glaciers, vast fields of organic compounds, ice volcanoes, geological hints that the world is relatively new, and evidence pointing to an internal ocean of water. Planetary scientist Michael Summers describes how the New Horizons mission revolutionized how we view the most distant worlds in our solar system.
For more than 125 years, filmmakers have been drawn to the vitality of New York City. Its universally recognized landmarks, diverse neighborhoods, and 8 million stories have helped make the city a featured player in over 17,000 movies, including King Kong, West Side Story, and Taxi Driver. Media historian Brian Rose demonstrates the changing ways New York has been captured on film and why it remains a star attraction today.
In our deluge of information, it's getting harder and harder to distinguish the revelatory from the contradictory. Drawing from their multidisciplinary UC Berkeley Big Ideas course and their book Third Millennium Thinking: Creating Sense in a World of Nonsense physicist Saul Perlmutter, philosopher John Campbell, and psychologist Robert MacCoun tackle how to better understand the world and make informed decisions as scientists do—with discernment, discipline, and firm foundations of reason.
Frederick Douglass was the preeminent African American voice of the 19th century and among the nation’s greatest orators, writers, and intellectuals. Born into slavery, he became a leading abolitionist, civil rights activist, and as the most-photographed American of the 19th-century, a public face of the nation. An exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, “One Life: Frederick Douglass,” explores his life and legacy. Its guest curator John Stauffer discusses the intimate relationship between art and protest through prints, photographs and ephemera.