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By Kerry Tremain To travel down the stairwells and past the locked doors into the cavernous basement beneath Kroeber Hall is to encounter the ghosts of hundreds of cultures past. The subterranean chamber shelters the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum’s hidden treasures, which anthropologists call some of the best in the world. Round a corner and dozens of New Guinea ancestor figures, carved in wood, turn up suddenly in solemn formations. Turn the key to a pale yellow cabinet and an 18th-century Samurai appears in the form of a metal suit of armor, a specter more strikingly real than anything Tom Cruise and his cinematic wizards could hope to conjure. In movies of the “Indiana Jones” genre, spirits long buried in ancient temples and pyramids, once discovered, unleash their spells upon the modern world. Now, under a new University plan, thousands of the ceremonial objects that once belonged to Egyptian pharaohs, Incan priests, and Pomo chiefs, stashed for a century in Kroeber’s basement, may soon release whatever multicultural magic they’ve been brewing--in downtown Berkeley. The plan is to build a new museum complex where the Hearst’s tribal totems are to be joined by those of more modern shamans like Hans Hoffman, Akira Kurosawa, and Cindy Sherman, which now reside at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. The University’s ambitious scheme--assuming it can surmount crucial obstacles, especially financing the various components--will take shape near the campus’s West Gate. Encompassing an entire city block between Oxford Street and Shattuck Avenue, it combines a hotel and conference center with new homes for BAM/PFA and the Hearst Museum.
For town and gown, the museum complex promises to be the most significant joint venture undertaken in decades. Adjacent to the Berkeley BART station and the nascent “Arts District,” the area already includes two live theaters and several movie theaters, music clubs, and schools for the arts, as well as built-in patrons from new housing developments downtown. The University’s director for the project, Keith Huffert, says a key goal is to enliven street life in the area. “There’s an amazing flow of people to and from BART who could support restaurants, museum stores, and other businesses,” he says. For its part, the University would gain a long-needed space for academic conferences and hotel rooms to accommodate its visitors. Officials believe the complex could once again make Berkeley a major cultural destination for the Bay Area, as it was a hundred years ago, when San Franciscans ferried across the bay to enjoy its cultural scene. By mid-century, San Francisco had become the recognized center of the arts and Berkeley’s cultural reputation had faded. Local arts did get a boost in 1968, when Zellerbach Hall opened, and again two years later, when the Berkeley Art Museum (initially called the University Art Museum) inaugurated its futurist building, composed of angular planes of concrete. The museum steadily built its collection of Asian and modern art (including a substantial donation by Hans Hoffman, who once taught at Berkeley), while PFA amassed one of the world’s most significant film collections. Unfortunately, the once-celebrated BAM building is, as director Kevin Consey puts it, “seismically challenged.” In 1997, earthquake experts gave the structure their lowest rating. In response, the film archive moved to new temporary quarters across the street, and the main building underwent a futile $5-million retrofit that failed to make it sufficiently safe for the long haul. Although BAM is being forced to move, it’s still better positioned than the Hearst. The Beaux Arts building that John Galen Howard designed for that museum in 1919 was never constructed. Phoebe Hearst, who funded many of the anthropological expeditions that filled the museum with artifacts, died before it could be built. Since then, most of those artifacts have been hidden from public view, save for a small exhibition space in Kroeber Hall. BAM has another advantage as well. Its independent board of directors has raised money and helped acquire art for several years; they’re already in position to begin a capital campaign for the new building, which will cost well over $50 million. In contrast, the Hearst has been discouraged from constituting its own board and pursuing its own funds, partly because the academics that previously oversaw the collection had little interest in a museum for the general public. Consequently, BAM may break ground within five years, while the Hearst will probably require ten years to build its downtown museum. Both organizations face a formidable challenge in raising the millions needed to build their new homes. Consey plans to use the move as an occasion to rethink the art museum of the future. He and his board hope to create a space as innovative now as the current building was when it opened 34 years ago. “Painters are now making video and film,” he says. “Within a generation, the distinction between filmmakers and art-makers may well be meaningless.” And by coordinating exhibitions with the Hearst--combining, for example, ancient Japanese artifacts, modern Japanese films (PFA has the largest collection outside Tokyo), and avant-garde Japanese digital art--the viewer could be exposed to cultural themes that both cut across and reveal specific cultural histories. Beyond the museum itself, Consey thinks the new complex will force the city to decide on its own future. “Some residents still see Berkeley as a rural enclave that got out of control, others as a small but dynamic college town, and still others as a pro-growth, visionary city,” he says, making it clear he thinks the latter camp will likely win. This being Berkeley, there will certainly be disputes: over how many stories will be allowed, over the number of parking spaces, over the architectural design and integrity of the buildings, and over whether the city gets its fair share of the projected financial benefits. But even traditional critics of local development, like architectural historian Susan Cerny, believe that the block where the museum complex is planned is an appropriate place to build more intensely. After all, she says, the existing suburban-style Bank of America office replaced a six-story John Galen Howard building. When asked which existing museums might be models for the new one, Consey points to projects in Japan and Switzerland, which combine clusters of activities while lowering the wall between high culture and public service. “But no pre-existing project combines all that we hope for. Unlike existing cultural fortresses that are dense and opaque, the new museums should be light and transparent, and environmentally innovative. They should be a symbiosis of style and substance,” he says. “We’re truly inventing our own paradigm.” |
 BURIED TREASURES: The Hearst Museum is full of them, like these Abelam cult figures from New Guinea.
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CULTURAL SITE: The new museums, to replace the Bank of America and other buildings (left) "should be light, transparent, and environmentally innovative."
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