The museum has mounted important exhibitions of the works of Ant Farm, Joe Brainard, Joan Brown, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Robert Colescott, Jay DeFeo, Juan Gris, Eva Hesse, Paul Kos, Robert Mapplethorpe, Barry McGee, Richard Misrach, Bruce Nauman, Peter Paul Rubens, Martin Puryear, Sebastião Salgado, William Wiley, and many others.

[9] MATRIX has featured artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Louise Bourgeois, James Lee Byars, Sophie Calle, Jay DeFeo, Willem de Kooning, Juan Downey, Eva Hesse, Sol LeWitt, Shirin Neshat, Nancy Spero, Cecilia Vicuña, and Andy Warhol.

More recently, MATRIX has sought to establish a dynamic balance between international, national, and local artists, featuring artists such as Zarouhie Abdalian, Michael Armitage, Geta Brătescu, Cecilia Edefalk, Paz Errázuriz, Nicole Eisenman, Myoko Ito, Anna Maria Maiolino, Otobong Nkanga, Will Rogan, Linda Stark, and John Zurier.

According to The New York Times, "with the acquisition…the museum and film archive will become one of the world’s most important centers for the study of Conceptual art.

"[16][17] Drawing on the larger collection, the exhibition Rooted West: Twentieth Century African American Quilts in California will open at BAMPFA in June 2025.

[26] The former Berkeley Art Museum building was designed by Mario Ciampi and associates Ronald E. Wagner and Richard Jurasch and opened in 1970.

[6] The concrete Brutalist structure—one of the most inventive buildings in that style, with its fan-shaped procession down a spiral of semi-open galleries—was deemed seismically unsafe in 1997, and iron braces were added in 2001 to improve safety.

Citing the weak economy and trouble raising necessary funds, BAMPFA decided to re-construct and enlarge (rather than completely demolish) the former University of California Press printing plant at that site, a 1939 Art Deco building on the California Register of Historic Resources and qualified to be on the National Register of Historic Places because of its role in the publication of the United Nations Charter.