New to the Collections, Spring 2005

Nicholas Nixon: Heather Brown McCaan, Mimi Brown, Bebe Brown Nixon & Laurie Brown, New Canaan, Connecticut, 1975; silver gelatin prints; 7 11/16 x 9 11/16 in.; gift of Robert Adams; photo courtesy of the Fraenkel Gallery.

BAM collections have expanded in interesting and diverse directions with an impressive array of recent gifts. Bay Area collector William K. Ehrenfeld donated nearly three hundred nineteenth-century photographs, predominantly from North Africa, including works produced by the earliest photographic studios established in the region. The museum also received gifts of an extensive series of images by Life Magazine photojournalist Jack Birns from his book Assignment Shanghai: Photographs on the Eve of Revolution (2003), and a twenty-five-year span of photographs by the internationally recognized artist Nicholas Nixon. Nixon's images include several from his ongoing series The Brown Sisters, an annual chronicle since 1975 of his wife Bebe and her three sisters. Together, the seemingly casual photographs of the Brown sisters powerfully resonate with the fullness of the life of a family. Selections from The Brown Sisters will be on view starting in July in Figurations in Gallery 4.

Berkeley collectors Robert Harshorn Shimshak and Marion Brenner donated an exciting range of contemporary works, including drawings by Austrian Conceptual artist Erwin Wurm, a suite of monochromatic paintings by David Simpson, and mixed-media works by Nayland Blake, Barry McGee, and Ricky Swallow. Other exciting acquisitions include major works by Bay Area artists Maria Porges, Shirley Shor, and Kota Ezawa.