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The photograph reproduced here, of Mario Savio addressing a crowd at Berkeley, might at first seem an unlikely choice for a University of California publication. The Free Speech Movement represents, after all, a difficult period in the University’s history. But this modest little 8×10 glossy, made by an Oakland Tribune journalist to illustrate a news event, seems to me an apt selection to stand for Sheryl Conkelton’s ambitious and fascinating exhibition, The University Collects.

Conkelton turned up the picture at The Bancroft Library during the course of the museum’s two-year survey of UC photography collections, which she directed. Visually compelling, historically rich—both a memento of a particular event and a virtual catalog of mid-’60s American collegiate hair and clothing styles—the photograph performs a whole range of functions, and is valuable to us as art, history, sociology, political science, even psychology. It is such breadth, and particularly the breadth of the University of California’s institutional scope, which is really the subject of this issue of the Bulletin.

The University Survey of Photographic Resources (USPR) uncovered 159 discrete collections on the nine UC campuses and associated research facilities-collections housing over 20 million photographs. (An extensive Directory of Photographic Collections was published by the museum last year.) As curator Conkelton points out in her essay here, the reasons for which these pictures were collected are as varied as the departments which care for them.

Yet among the millions of images—all, presumably, made for specific purposes—are pictures which have acquired importance as a consequence of being the first, or only, or clearest, representative of a type. These are the pictures Conkelton presents to us. We are particularly pleased to originate The University Collects at this museum, for the concept of breadth—a theme woven throughout the exhibit, also characterizes the California Museum of Photography. Far from being an art museum for photographs, the CMP is a humanities-based program examining, in the words of the museum’s Mission Statement, “photography’s impact on culture.” In the service of that end, we could offer no better presentation than this exhibition.

For the museum, and for myself as well, I would like to thank Sheryl Conkelton for her devoted service in coordinating the USPR and preparing this issue of the Bulletin and the exhibition. I also join her in acknowledging the many individuals who have assisted the museum during the two years of the survey.

Most essential among the participants in this project are the managers of the various University collections, who invariably gave their valuable time and expertise in a cheerful and professional manner. This project would have no value at all without such enthusiastic cooperation, and we regret only that we cannot thank them individually.

The University Collects and the USPR were first envisioned by an inspired group of UC Riverside scholars—the 1982/83 Faculty Advisory Committee which consisted of Kenneth Barkin, Richard Carrott, Joe Deal, Robert Essick, Mark Gottdiener, Harry Lawton (Chair), John Moore, and Ronald Tobey. The project benefited from the able and considered advice of a University-wide committee which included Reyner Banham, Hilda M. Bohem, Lawrence Dinnean, Harvey Himmelfarb, Ulrich Keller, John Moore, and Edith Tonelli; as well as James Enyeart, Director of the Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona.

The exhibition will travel to galleries at two other University of California campuses. We express our thanks for their cooperation to L. Price Amerson, Jr., Director, The Richard L. Nelson Art Gallery and Fine Arts Collection (Davis), and Melinda Wortz, Director, and Phyllis J. Lutjeans, University Art Gallery (Irvine).

Finally, we wish to thank the staff of the museum, a group of people unparalleled for their committment and ability.