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Scott Saul’s biography and website are shedding new light on the late comic and actor.
Arts & humanities archive
BAM/PFA throws an all-day moving party
December 19, 2014: The Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive is celebrating its final day of programs in its Bancroft Way building, with art, music, dance, performance and a festive procession to its new site at Center and Oxford streets. Things kick off at 11 a.m. Sunday (Dec. 21).
Beautiful botanical art, on display now at the Bot Garden 
December 16, 2014: The beauty and complexity of plants are captured in extraordinary detail in the UC Botanical Garden’s new “Following in the Bartrams’ Footsteps” exhibit, which opened this week in Julia Morgan Hall. Featured are 44 original artworks by artists who create their pieces in the style of John and William Bartram, who lived three centuries ago. Watch our video to take an online tour with one of the artists.
Mellon grant advances Berkeley’s Digital Humanities
December 2, 2014: A $2 million Mellon Foundation grant will expand UC Berkeley offerings for faculty and students that will introduce them to a range of digital tools and methods.
Three free days of all-things-piano
November 13, 2014: Free lectures, performances, workshops and recitals are all part of the 2014 Piano Institute, taking place Friday through Sunday (Nov. 14-16). The Music Department program is open to the public.
Love and loss drive campus ‘Day of the Dead’ art show 
October 31, 2014: Jason Thomason claims no Mexican heritage. But since several of his friends died young from hard living, he has found solace in the Day of the Dead, which comes on the heels of Halloween. The art practice student has curated a Dia de los Muertos exhibit for his senior class project in Kroeber Hall.
Julia Morgan Hall’s new UC Botanical Garden party place
October 30, 2014: Julia Morgan Hall, now relocated to the UC Botanical Garden in Strawberry Canyon, is open for business meetings, weddings, parties and other events following an extensive restoration. The building was designed by the famed Berkeley architect and alumna in 1911.
Mavis Staples reflects on activism and music, past and present
October 28, 2014: Mavis Staples, whose campus visit Thursday (Oct. 30) culminated with a show presented by Cal Peformances, grew up singing as part of the Staples Singers, a family group that became widely known in the 1960s for songs that helped galvanize the Civil Rights Movement. Staples, now going solo, says a lot of the older songs are still relevant today.
Bancroft opens stunning California Captured on Canvas exhibit
October 21, 2014: The Bancroft Library is providing a window onto California’s unique history and culture with an new exhibit of oil paintings from its pictorial collection, some of which haven’t been publicly displayed before.
Campus mourns the loss of David Wessel, pioneer in music and science
October 20, 2014: David L. Wessel, who forged new territory in the arena of cognitive science, computer programming and music, has died at the age of 72. He was a leader in the campus’s Center for New Music and Audio Technology and its music department.
Rare silent film, with live music, highlights sweeping Georgian cinema series
October 15, 2014: The screening of the rare Georgian silent film Eliso, with live musical accompaniment by Trio Kavkasia playing a score commissioned by BAM/PFA, is a highlight of the 50-film Discovering Georgian Cinema series now underway at BAM/PFA. Eliso will be shown Oct. 25 and 26.
Berkeley and the making of Yosemite
September 25, 2014: Yosemite National Park would be something quite different were it not for UC Berkeley and its visionary scientists, alumni and leaders. That’s the blue-and-gold current flowing through Yosemite: A Storied Landscape, a just-published e-book that brings to vivid life the first national park in celebration of its 150th birthday.
Campanile carillon to play ‘black national anthem’ Wednesday
September 16, 2014: “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” will ring from atop UC Berkeley’s Campanile on Wednesday, Sept. 17, at noon. This is the first time the song, also known as the black national anthem, will be played on the tower’s carillon.
Berkeley’s Eco Ensemble to perform at Venice Music Biennale
September 11, 2014: The campus’s new-music “dream team” is headed to Italy for two concerts featuring works by Berkeley music-composition faculty and alumni at what the ensemble”s founder, Edmund Campion, calls “one of the most visible and important sites for new music today.”
Where T-shirt culture meets the black protest tradition
September 8, 2014: For her dissertation research on T-shirts and the black-protest tradition, doctoral candidate Kimberly McNair has been known to visit street fairs and flea markets — to find new Ts and meet their vendors — as well as to read scholarly theory on performance, media and “remix” practices.
‘Envisioning Human Rights’ frames resilience of ‘societies under siege’
September 3, 2014: A new photo exhibit, timed to help celebrate the Human Rights Center’s 20th anniversary on campus, features poignant depictions of the struggles of victims of war, repression and poverty in places ranging from Bosnia, Rwanda, Iraq and Guatemala to the American South.
Coming this fall: FSM, early America, vaudeville, sounds of the human condition
September 2, 2014: World politics, world-class artistry, Homecoming weekend — just some of what’s happening at Berkeley this fall. The semester brings the Australian Ballet, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Willem Dafoe, weekly discussions on the Middle East. And did we mention the 50th anniversary of the Free Speech Movement?
‘HackTheHearst’ to expand public discovery of ancient treasures
August 27, 2014: Hackers are being invited to compete in a contest to open up the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology’s digital collections to a wider public, making the museum’s treasures even more accessible to students, Native Americans, researchers and everyone else.
Professor and poet Robert Hass receives Wallace Stevens Award
August 26, 2014: UC Berkeley English professor Robert Hass has received the Wallace Stevens Prize from the Academy of American Poets, adding to his honors that already include a Pulitzer Prize and serving as the U.S. Poet Laureate from 1995 to 1997.
Gourmet Ghettos exhibit at Magnes to celebrate religious rituals around food
August 26, 2014: “Gourmet Ghettos: Modern Food Rituals,” is a new exhibit opening soon at the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life at the University of California, Berkeley.
Music department piano, instruments sale will be grand
August 12, 2014: An upcoming sale of lightly used pianos and other musical instruments will help provide instruments for UC Berkeley music students every year. The event is open to students, faculty, staff and the public.
Giving the ‘Breath of Life’ to endangered languages
August 5, 2014: For the past 20 years, dozens of California Indians hoping to save their native languages have gathered on campus every other summer. A short video on the Breath of Life conference, excerpted from an upcoming documentary, shows why.
Filmmaker Orlando Bagwell to direct journalism’s documentary program
July 30, 2014: Orlando Bagwell, maker of influential documentary films about the civil-rights movement and U.S. race relations, will join the Graduate School of Journalism as a professor and director of its documentary program.
Maxine Hong Kingston wins National Medal of Arts
July 28, 2014: Maxine Hong Kingston, influential writer and an alumna and longtime lecturer at UC Berkeley, received the 2013 National Medal of Arts July 28 in a White House ceremony.
Dirks, in Aspen, talks about the career paths of elite collegians
July 2, 2014: Speaking on an Aspen Ideas Festival panel on the state of the humanities, UC Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks talked about the career paths of elite college students. “You know, the tradition at Columbia is that you read Aristotle and then you go to Goldman Sachs,” he said. “And the dream at Berkeley is to do social work and then go work for Google or Facebook.”
Block party in July to celebrate midpoint of new BAM/PFA building construction
June 20, 2014: With the last steel beams about to go up in the frame of the new BAM/PFA building and construction nears its midpoint, officials are inviting the community to a July 17 block party to celebrate the milestone and share the historic moment.
Cal Performances presents 2014 Ojai North Music Festival
June 19, 2014: The 2014 Ojai North Music Festival, opening Thursday (June 19), features an eclectic mix of themes, from comic opera and a contemporary string quartet, to new music, a capella, and a late night cabaret at the Faculty Club.
In memoriam: Anthony Bulloch, scholar of Hellenic literature
May 30, 2014: The longtime Berkeley scholar devoted himself especially to undergraduate teaching, offering high-enrollment lecture courses in Greek myths and religion as well as a large number of freshman seminars.
Emma Goldman Papers wins archivists’ award
May 29, 2014:
The Society of American Archivists’ Hamer-Kegan Award for 2014 goes to the Emma Goldman Papers Project for helping Goldman’s voice, struggles and activism to be heard.
J-School’s sexual-assault documentary wins RFK journalism award
May 23, 2014: “Rape in the Fields,” a yearlong investigation into the widespread sexual assault of American field workers, won the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights’ top journalism award.
