Making Their Mark: Works from the Shah Garg Collection

The Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive will present the exclusive West Coast engagement of Making Their Mark: Works from the Shah Garg Collection, a widely acclaimed exhibition of one of the leading private collections of work by women artists. Making Their Mark is the first public presentation of this important collection, which premiered in New York in 2023 and was assembled by the Bay Area philanthropist Komal Shah and her husband Gaurav Garg. More than seventy artworks are represented in the exhibition, which juxtaposes contemporary practices with pathbreaking historical works to illuminate transgenerational affinities, influences, and methodologies among artists from the postwar era to the present. The exhibition’s Berkeley presentation coincides with the launch of the Shah Garg Women Artists Research Fund, which will support new scholarship in the form of public programs, publications, and exhibitions featuring women artists at BAMPFA.

BAMPFA’s presentation of Making Their Mark follows the exhibition’s opening in New York last year at 548 West 22nd Street. The BAMPFA exhibition is curated by Cecilia Alemani, Donald R. Mullen Jr. Director and Chief Curator of High Line Art and BAMPFA Chief Curator Margot Norton. BAMPFA’s presentation of Making Their Mark will include a unique selection of works from the Shah Garg Collection, including works that will go on view for the first time. The exhibition will highlight women artists with deep ties to the Bay Area such as Mary Corse, Trude Guermonprez, Mary Heilmann, Mary Lovelace O’Neal, Elizabeth Murray, and Kay Sekimachi, as well as other internationally distinguished artists including Lynda Benglis, Barbara Chase-Riboud, Sonya Gomes, Maria Lassnig, Joan Mitchell, Julie Mehretu, Howardena Pindell, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, and many others. Following its BAMPFA engagement, Making Their Mark will travel to the Kemper Art Museum in St. Louis, Missouri in September 2025.

In developing the exhibition’s curatorial focus at BAMPFA, Norton has emphasized the intergenerational dialogues between artists who circumvent and break through conventions in artmaking, embracing craft techniques, unconventional supports, and alternative materials—drawing illuminating parallels between the work of younger artists like Aria Dean, Tau Lewis, Tschabalala Self, and Rose Simpson and older generations of artists who preceded them. These themes are further illuminated in the book accompanying the exhibition, Making Their Mark: Art by Women in the Shah Garg Collection, which includes important new scholarship and critical essays on many of the artists represented in the exhibition. Coedited by Mark Godfrey and Katy Siegel, the book will be available for purchase in the BAMPFA Store.

Supported by a major gift from the Shah Garg Foundation, the Shah Garg Women Artists Research Fund at BAMPFA will unite the museum’s educational mission as a leading university art museum with a history of celebrating the work of women artists in its exhibition program—most notably with its ambitious 2021 survey New Time: Art and Feminisms in the 21st Century, its convening role in the nationwide Feminist Art Coalition, and recent retrospectives of Alison Knowles and Amalia Mesa-Bains. Along with their support of this new research initiative, the Shah Garg Foundation has also committed to donate select artworks from Making Their Mark to BAMPFA’s permanent collection.

“While there have been many survey exhibitions of work by women artists, Making Their Mark is unique in its emphasis on cross-generational dialogues between artists who go beyond conventions in artmaking established within a historically patriarchal field,” said Norton. “BAMPFA is proud to partner with two distinguished Bay Area art collectors who share our desire to elevate the scholarship and support of women artists past, present, and future.”

“The significant investment in the work of women artists by Komal and Guarav is truly inspiring and groundbreaking,” said BAMPFA’s Executive Director Julie Rodrigues Widholm. “We are so grateful that their vision dovetails with ours at BAMPFA to create public access to such excellent examples of artwork by leading artists of our time, which will generate new scholarship and new art histories for years to come. It is especially fitting that this partnership is with an esteemed UC Berkeley alumna.”

“The Shah Garg Foundation is honored to bring Making Their Mark to an institution as brilliant as Berkeley and further educate a younger generation on the accomplishments of women artists,” said Shah. “We are filled with so much excitement at the opportunity to spotlight works that have rarely been seen before to this community. With this iteration of the exhibition and the unveiling of the Shah Garg Women Artists Research Fund, we hope to continue the vital conversation of representation and give way to tangible progress for women.”