When Komal Shah was a little girl growing up in India in the home of her textile merchant father, she and her sister did not have a lot of toys. “We used fabric samples to make costumes for our dolls,” she said in a phone interview. “It taught me a lot about color, and developed my eye. That carried forward into my collecting journey.” Today, the Atherton resident and former tech executive is considered one of California’s most influential art collectors, alongside her husband, Gaurav Garg. Seventy-eight of the 370 pieces collected over more than a decade are on view in a stunning exhibition at Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive titled “Making Their Mark: Art by Women in the Shah Garg Collection.” Included are artworks as diverse as Untitled, a 1946 “drip” painting by Janet Sobel, an artist now acknowledged to have been a major influence on Jackson Pollack; a huge rope sculpture by Françoise Grossen, Contact 111; and one of Joan Mitchell’s final diptychs, bursting with light emanating from abstract sunflowers.   Shah’s first acquisition came in 2011, when she saw a work on paper by the Indian-American artist Rina Banerjee at an art auction. “It was a goddess-like woman, holding an umbrella upside down, full of tears. No one was bidding on it,” Shaw said, but it struck a chord with her and she bought it.  As her journey continued, she found herself increasingly drawn to “bold, innovative” works—and she realized “the works that spoke to me were by women.” Eventually, this included pieces by Elizabeth Murray, Trude Guermonprez, Jennifer Bartlett, Laura Owens, Carol Bove, Carrie Moyer, Phyllida Barlow, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Cecily Brown, Simone Leigh and many others. She began visiting women artists in their studios, and was “stunned” to learn how undervalued their work continues to be. Only 12% of museum acquisitions during the past decade are by women artists, and women artists earn 10 cents on the dollar compared to male artists, said BAMPFA chief curator Margot Norton, who co-curated “Making Their Mark” with Cecilia Alemani. Multiple artwork on display in ‘Making Their Mark.’ (Photo by Kelly Sullivan) As the collection grew, the idea for a book featuring it matured. In May 2023, Making Their Mark: Art by Women in the Shah Garg Collection was published, containing both images of selected works and multiple essays by art experts. Then came the idea of a New York exhibition, which came to fruition in November 2023 at a former gallery space, curated by Alemani. It featured more than 90 pieces by 84 artists. It was, by any definition, a huge success, generating major feature stories in both the New York Times and Harper’s Bazaar. “More than 50,000 people saw the show,” Shah said. “When we had artist talks, 500 people would show up … there was clearly a deep hunger.” After this reception, Shah and Alemani’s thoughts turned to Berkeley. Shah has a master’s in business administration from the Haas School of Business at UCB, and “the university is at the forefront of change,” she said. Alemani had a long professional connection to BAMPFA’s Norton, and through her, Norton met Shah. “She asked if we would bring the exhibition to Berkeley,” Norton said. This connection has also resulted in 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, according to BAMPFA materials. Visitor’s View of ‘Making Their Mark’ The first piece a visitor sees before entering the formal gallery spaces is Jennifer Bartlett’s At Sea, composed of 115 plates, enamel and silkscreen on steel, also including a section of oil on canvas. Part of a series dedicated to water, it evokes the classic connection of the female yin to water, its fluidity and its ability to ultimately triumph over even stone and metal. On an opposite wall, the ribbons composing Andrea Bowers’ “Political Ribbons” feature silkscreened phrases, such as “Sexism Sucks” and “Empower the Women Around You.” Visitors are allowed to take one ribbon each. This was a source of joy to Shah, as she watched 2- and 4-year-olds gleefully take the ribbons and waft them through the gallery. The six rooms are organized in themes: Gestural Abstraction, Luminous Abstraction, Painting and Technology, Craft is Art, Of Selves and Spirits, and Disobedient Bodies. These are drawn both from the book and the New York exhibition, Norton said. But there is no need to visit the rooms or view the works in a particular order. One can marvel at the power of Simone Leigh’s bronze sculpture, Stick, then turn to Mary Weatherford’s monumental painting, Light Falling Like a Broken Chain. Stick, for example, which portrays a Black woman’s head and torso atop a “skirt” incorporating protruding sticks, “has such presence in how it takes up space,” Norton said. Leigh, she said, references innovative African building techniques, “[and her work encompasses] both architecture and the body … abstraction is a pathway to the self.” Oakland-based artist Mary Lovelace O’Neal is represented by Kurban, A Sweeter Day to Come, an abstract mixed-media on canvas, which is part of a series called “The Panthers in My Father’s Palace.” O’Neal, said Norton, taught at UCB from 1979-2006, becoming head of the Art Practice Department. Kurban, Norton said, was inspired by a trip O’Neal took to Morocco, by her childhood memories of life with her father and by her own long-term activism, including with the Black Panthers. Within Kurban, a vividly animated black note evokes a panther. Turning to the “Painting and Technology” section, visitors can read that “the binary system of computer code can be traced to the weaving loom…traditionally women’s work” on notes next to Diné (Navajo) artist Melissa Cody’s weaving, The Three Rivers. Jaune Quick-to-See Smith’s 2021 mixed-media on canvas, In the Future Map, is eerily prescient, with one insert reading, “Elon Musk wants to go to Mars/And colonize.” Norton pointed to Laura Owens’ 2016 Untitled as expressing the idea that “painting is a technology.” BAMPFA materials state: “The artist alludes to this layering of references in the bulbous shapes that sweep across the canvas—a nod to the image-editing software that allows the user to select a brush shape and alter its thickness to create marks and erasures.” Shah is a vocal proponent of giving works created in classic craft techniques, such as fiber art and ceramics, their full acknowledgment as artworks, especially because for centuries many of these pieces have been crafted by women who were not, in some cases, even allowed to work in other forms. In the “Craft is Art” room, another one of “Making Their Mark’s” stand-out pieces is Joyce J. Scott’s Harriet’s Quilt. Created from 2016-2022 with multiple collaborators including the artist’s mother, Elizabeth Talford Scott, the work, an homage to Harriet Tubman, is irresistible. Constructed with glass beads, found plastic beads and yarn, it also incorporates fabric knotted by Elizabeth Talford Scott. Of her mother, Scott said, “She had an improvisational spirit and rascally ways, which gladly came through in everything.” In “Of Selves and Spirits,” one finds Pattern to Joseph’s Coat, created by the now-famous Freedom Quilting Bee, a quilting cooperative based in the community of Alberta, Alabama, 30 miles from Selma. Born during the civil rights movement of the 1960s, the Bee “belongs to a long history of alternative, communal economic work performed by Black Americans,” according to BAMPFA materials. Moving along through the exhibition, other works stand out: Tau Lewis’s astounding 2023 multimedia textile work, Saint Mozelle in the Aphid Orgy; Emma Amos’s’ 1982 Star, one of her group of “pioneering figurative paintings in acrylic that incorporated her own brightly colored woven fabric”; and Joan Semmel’s 1981 Horizon’s, another monumental work. Also in “Disobedient Bodies” is Carol Bove’s The Chevaliers, a large sculpture using urethane paint and steel. Bove is another artist with an East Bay background. Though now based in New York, she grew up in Berkeley. Shah has a personal connection with the piece. When she visited Bove’s Brooklyn studio, she marveled at the skills needed to “torque the steel cubes into position.” She saw this sculpture unfinished. “I loved it,” she said, and mentioned to the artist that it might be a thought to paint it in “Philip Guston pink.” Guston had just had a show canceled because of misreadings of his depictions of Ku Klux Klan-like images. “She did it!” Shah said. This section also includes Pinaree Sanpitak’s lovely The Body and the Gold Breast. BAMPFA materials explain: “In the mid-1990s, after the formidable experience of learning how to breastfeed her son… Sanpitak began to create works that emphasize themes of femininity, the bodily, the sacred, and the spiritual.”  Multiple artwork on display in ‘Making Their Mark.’ (Photo by Kelly Sullivan) Where There’s Art, There’s Hope The timeliness of “Making Their Mark” cannot be overstated. As many women witness forces attempting to thrust them back 50 years, the artwork in the exhibition demonstrates these women’s resiliency, and indeed, their “resistance” to being pigeonholed by cultures dominated by men. “[They are confronting] multiple centuries of brainwashing,” Shah said.  The book and both exhibitions, of course, precede the election. But “the intergenerational dialogues in the exhibition, [the artists’] conversations with their predecessors, cause us to think about how difficult it has been for women for so long,” Norton said. “These biases pervade every aspect of what we do.” Art, she said, is “indebted to these artists,” for their innovations, and “how pivotal their work has been.” In that lies the inspiration.  “[‘Making Their Mark’] has a vibrancy, a hopefulness,” Norton said. “The collection now has a voice of its own,” Shah added. Those seeking a source of revivification might well find it at BAMPFA among these works. More Opportunities for Insight BAMPFA is offering multiple ways to learn more about the exhibition and individual artists. UC Berkeley graduate students in the departments of gender and women’s studies, history of art, and film and media studies offer tours of the exhibition on selected Wednesdays at 12:15pm, Saturdays at 2pm and Free First Thursdays at 1:15pm. Saturday, Jan. 11, 2025, 11:30am to 1pm: Gallery+Studio/Dots and Circles. Visitors ages 6-12 with an accompanying adult can make their own version of a Howardena Pindell mixed-media painting after an up-close-and-personal look at her example in the gallery. Saturday, Jan. 25, 2pm: Artists Conversation: Painting and Technology. Featuring artists whose work is included in “Making Their Mark,” this discussion explores the innovative ways artists have transformed the language of painting as technologies evolve.Elizabeth Murray Special Edition Print Mailing. Occasioned by the presentation of Elizabeth Murray’s monumental work, Joanne in the Canyon (1991), in the exhibition “Making Their Mark,” BAMPFA’s Art Lab collaborates with the Estate of Elizabeth Murray to create a special edition risograph print mailing. Sign up online to receive a copy of the limited edition print by Feb. 1, 2025 (first come, first served).  Visit bampfa.org/making-their-mark to see other upcoming events, which will be added to as the exhibition continues.‘Making Their Mark: Art by Women in the Shah Garg Collection,’ through April 20, 2025, BAMPFA, 2155 Center St., Berkeley. Open Wed-Sun, 11am to 7pm (check for reduced holiday season hours). General admission, $14; Free First Thursdays. 510.642.0808. bampfa.org