If we were to characterize a typical art museum as a display case for cultural products, then a university art museum might be a display case set right in the doorway to a vast library. Tapping this singular resource gives a university museum such as the UC Berkeley Art Museum access to a cutting-edge and constantly evolving array of views and insights on almost every conceivable topic, ranging from ancient histories and philosophy to laser technology and robotics.
Universities are perhaps inward focused by nature.
The intellectual exchange is one that rebounds between professors and their students and, failing the occasional discovery of a new planet or cure for the common cold, the public is seldom made aware of what it is that academics actually think about. As one of the few facets of the university that actively invites the public through its doors, the university art museum is the ideal conduit for some of the campus's intellectual wealth to be dispersed to a sometimes less academic, but no less appreciative audience. At Berkeley, the job of gently coaxing the gaze of academia beyond the perimeters of campus belongs to Sherry Goodman, BAM's Curator for Education. Fundamental to this is an unshakable belief in the intrinsic value of the aesthetic experience. Combined with this is an understanding of the ways in which the visual arts can provide a unique entree to other cultures, transcending their immediate context to provide insight into the human condition as it exists and has existed within different societies and in other times.