Sarah Cain's site-specific installation To—you know—you at BAMPFA

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

Atrium Projects / Sarah Cain: To—you know—you

Now showing30 October 2025 – 6 June 2027$18

Los Angeles painter Sarah Cain, a UC Berkeley MFA, improvises a site-specific painted installation across the museum's atrium.

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On now All of October 2026

A pair of pink Nikes hangs on a painted wall above two painted sofas. Cain says she never plans a piece: she turns up on site with a list of paints and improvises, and she painted the walls, ceiling and floor of BAMPFA's atrium while passersby watched.

You walk down the stairs straight into it. Bright swathes of colour run up the full height of the atrium and across the floor, past a small mounted canvas, a row of four vases and a triangular stained glass window cut into the building. The sofas are for sitting on. Cain admits that can feel like breaking a rule and says that's the point.

It's one room, not a gallery show, so it's a short stop. The Daily Californian called it "a radiant space". It's in the Bakar Atrium, included in the $18 admission, free on the first Thursday of the month and for under-14s and UC Berkeley students and staff, and up until June 6, 2027.

Look for

The painted sofas
Two sofas sit against the walls, painted into the installation, and you are meant to sit on them.
The pink Nikes
A pair of pink Nikes hangs on the painted wall near the sofas.
The stained glass window
Cain inserted a triangular stained glass window into the museum's existing architecture; it looks out onto Oxford Street.
Paint on the floor
The colour does not stop at the wall: bright swathes run down from the atrium's full height and spread across the floor under your feet.