Peter Selz, founding director of BAMPFA, dies at 100

Peter Selz, the founding director of the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive from 1965 to 1973, died June 22 in Berkeley. He was 100.

Selz, a Jewish-German immigrant who fled Nazi Germany for the United States in 1936, went on to become “one of the most distinguished scholars and curators of the postwar art scene,” BAMPFA noted in a news release, establishing friendships with such influential artists as Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, Sam Francis and Christo.