So much for those golden sunsets

15 October 2003

Photo courtesy Ed Kashi

"Still Working, Bonne Bell Cosmetic Factory," by photograher Ed Kashi, depicts 71-year-old Ruth Connie Bowen learning how to operate a packaging machine for a Lakewood, Ohio, cosmetics manufacturer specializing in products for teenage girls. This is just one of more than 100 pieces — by artists including Imogen Cunningham, George Segal, John Coplans, and Robert Mapplethorpe — in the Berkeley Art Museum’s latest show, "Exhibiting Signs of Age" (through Jan. 18, 2004, in the museum’s Theater Gallery).

In addition to the exhibit, BAM will screen Aging in America: The Years Ahead in the Museum Theater at 5:30 p.m., Thursday, Nov. 13. The product of a seven-year project that spanned 25 states, the documentary (created by Kashi and writer Julia Winokur) examines varied experiences of aging that defy society’s conventional notions of retirement.