Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA)Downtown Berkeley, next to the UC Berkeley campus

Maren Hassinger: Living Moving Growing

Now showing6 June 2026 – 29 November 2026$18

The most significant retrospective of Maren Hassinger, spanning sculpture, performance, video and installation from the early 1970s to today.

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On now All of October 2026

You walk in on four lengths of junkyard hemp rope, each as thick as a weightlifter's arm, tied in loose knots on the floor. Hassinger made them as a UCLA grad student in 1972, and the show follows her from there through five decades of wire rope, tree branches and plastic bags.

It runs mostly in order, Los Angeles to New York. Halfway through, branches are paired with wire rope, then colour arrives: rose leaves papered across two walls and Love, hundreds of pink bags each blown up by someone's breath. It's the most plastic bags in one room in California since the checkout ban. A dark corner holds the videos.

KQED's Sarah Hotchkiss called it one of BAMPFA's "especially strong" shows, and the New York Review of Books found the work "quietly seductive". The catch, per 48 Hills: the dances survive only as photographs. It's included in the $18 admission, free on the first Thursday, and a redwood Monument (Pyramid) stands at the UC Botanical Garden.

Editor's pick

The most significant retrospective of Maren Hassinger yet, covering sculpture, performance, video and installation from the early 1970s on.

Look for

The 1972 hemp ropes
Four junkyard hemp ropes, each as thick as a weightlifter's arm, lie in loose, unfurling knots on the floor near the entrance.
River
Steel chain wound with nautical rope snakes across the floor in long curves, a tribute to the waterways that carried enslaved people to freedom.
Beach
Dozens of hip-height wooden rods tilt out of lumpy plaster bases like grass in the wind, pointing you on into the next gallery.
Love
Hundreds of pink plastic bags, each inflated with a person's breath and holding a tiny love note, are pinned up a towering wall from floor to ceiling.
Daily Mask
In a 3:32 film in the dark video corner, Hassinger draws on her face with black grease pencil until it becomes a reference to blackface minstrelsy.

Good for

Going Solo
Nerding Out

Skip if

You want to see her dance: the performances appear mostly as still photographs, not film.

With kids

BAMPFA runs Gallery+Studio workshops on the show for ages 6 to 12: a short tour, then paper sculptures with hidden messages inside. Under-14s get in free.