Announcement: Director of the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive

June 25, 2020

 Chancellor's Office

Dear Campus Community,

I am pleased to announce that Julie Rodrigues Widholm has been appointed to be the next director of the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA). She will begin her tenure on August 1.

An entrepreneurial and visionary arts leader with a pragmatic grounding, Julie has served as director and chief curator of the DePaul Art Museum since 2015. There, she built a nascent university museum into one of Chicago’s major arts organizations, creating a dynamic space for artistic innovation and increasing the museum’s attendance by 40%, tripling its operating budget, and bolstering its fundraising, communications, and marketing infrastructure. Deeply committed to diversity and equity, Julie centralized the work of artists of color, women, and LGBTQ+ artists as she grew the museum’s collection and fostered new scholarship in more than ten publications. She also launched a multi-year Latinx Initiative in response to the lack of national visibility for U.S.-based artists of Latin American descent, and established an accessibility strategic plan to ensure that the museum was able to welcome a wide range of visitors. For her leadership, she was named Chicagoan of the Year in Museums by The Chicago Tribune in 2019.

Prior to joining the DePaul Art Museum, Julie spent nearly two decades at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), ultimately rising to the role of curator. At MCA, she organized major solo exhibitions of work by Doris Salcedo, Rashid Johnson, Amalia Pica, Cauleen Smith, Kathryn Andrews, Amanda Ross-Ho, and others. In her shows, she focused on championing under-recognized artists from marginalized groups as a way to expand the art canon and broaden the relevance of the museum.

Julie received her bachelor’s degree in art history and political science from the University of Illinois-Champaign-Urbana, and earned a master’s degree in art history, theory, and criticism from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Julie stood out among a stellar and diverse slate of director candidates for her strong management experience, artistic vision, passion for equity in the arts, and deep commitment to the teams she leads. I have no doubt that she will be a wonderful director for BAMPFA who will deepen its ties to the academic and social fabric of the Berkeley campus, strengthen its connections to the Bay Area community, and solidify its global reputation for artistic excellence.

Please join me in thanking the members of the BAMPFA director search committee for their diligent work on this search, and please welcome Julie to Berkeley and to BAMPFA.

Sincerely,
Carol Christ
Chancellor

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