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Andrea Bergen’s Art Hands the World Over to Its Scrappiest Scavengers
What do you think would happen if raccoons inherited the Earth? San Francisco artist Andrea Bergen posits that they’d be racing around on monster trucks, chowing down human snacks, slurping energy...
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YBCA Announces a New CEO After a Year of Protests and Staff Departures
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the multidisciplinary arts space in San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Gardens complex, today announced the appointment of Maricelle “Mari” Robles as its next CEO. Robles...
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100 Cultural Moments That’ve Shaped the Bay Area This Century (So Far)
Well, that snuck up on us! Can you believe that we’ve just capped the first 25 years of the millennium? Here at the KQED Arts & Culture desk, we started thinking about what the Bay Area arts scene...
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A Monumental Mural by Ranu Mukherjee Opens a New SF Ballet Program
The San Francisco Ballet and Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco have announced a new partnership to annually commission curtain drops from Bay Area artists. Earlier this year, Maria A. Guzmán Capron’s...
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Berkeley Art Center Slashes Budget, Launches Search for New Director
The Berkeley Art Center, a 57-year-old nonprofit arts space in North Berkeley’s Live Oak Park, announced on Dec. 13 the departure of co-directors Kimberley Acebo Arteche and Elena Gross. Arteche left...
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SF Arts Space 500 Capp Street Announces New Collective Leadership
Nonprofit arts space 500 Capp Street, located in David Ireland’s former Mission District home, will move forward as a collective, staff members announced on Tuesday. Under the new leadership structure...
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Art to See at the Start of 2025
Other than September, there is no bigger month for Bay Area visual art than January. Major shows open, year-long projects kick off, and the FOG Design+Art Fair (Jan. 23–25) caps off SF Art Week, a...
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Remembering My Friend Pete Doolittle, Anarchic San Francisco Artist
The morning after New Year’s Day, one of my oldest friends in San Francisco very suddenly, quite unexpectedly, died. His name was Pete Doolittle, and if you didn’t know him personally, you might know...
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Asking a Digital World to Believe in Film Photography
Nora Lalle poses at her home in the Outer Richmond on Jan. 10, 2025. She founded the photography magazine Pamplemousse in 2021. (David M. Barreda/KQED) San Francisco-born-and-raised artist Nora Lalle’s...
View ArticleNEA Awards $2.5 Million in Grants to Bay Area Arts Organizations
The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) has announced more than $2.5 million in 2025 grants to 88 different Bay Area arts organizations. The largest grant in the region will go to San Francisco’s Bay...
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The Artists of SFMOMA’s 2024 SECA Show Stand the Test of Time
In the month since I first visited the 2024 SECA Art Award exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, much has changed. Not to the show itself: The delicate paintings by Rupy C. Tut, Rose...
View ArticleAsian Art Museum Names New Director, Soyoung Lee
San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum will soon have a new director and CEO. The museum announced today the appointment of Soyoung Lee, who most recently worked at the Harvard Art Museums as chief curator....
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For 55 Years, Tom Marioni Has Pursued the Art of ‘Drinking Beer With Friends’
Outside of Tom Marioni’s studio on Howard Street, directly facing the great white side of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s cruise-ship-like extension, I find the artist and a few friends...
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When a Rug Is More Than Just a Rug
The one downside of the exhibition RugLife, on view through April 20 at the Museum of Craft and Design, is that you cannot touch the art. In a group show of technicolor textiles, lusciously thick piles...
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Bolinas Museum Announces New Executive Director
The Bolinas Museum has named Jessica Shaefer as its new executive director. The appointment comes just three months after Louisa Gloger left the position to lead Headlands Center for the Arts....
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‘Love + Basketball’ Opens in San Francisco Just in Time for the All-Star Game
With bedazzled basketball court backboards and nets styled in the fashion of Egyptian jewelry, Ann “Sole Sister” Johnson’s exhibition Love + Basketball: My Freedom Gotta Rim On It puts an eye-catching...
View ArticleAnh Phoong, California’s Billboard Queen, Launches a Design Contest
Update, Jan. 29, 2025: After backlash from artists on Instagram, Anh Phoong has increased the first prize of the design competition to $5,000. “We apologize if we offended any artists,” she wrote in a...
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SF Skateboard Mecca FTC Is Hosting its First Standalone Art Show
In the early ’90s, as an eighth grader in summer school, Andrew “Ando” Caulfield discovered the San Francisco skate shop For The City (FTC) purely by chance. His school was near the shop, and as a...
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These Art School ‘Artifacts’ Are More Than Meets the Eye
Before last week, I had never heard of the State Art Academy in Zürich. Then, I saw the exhibition Artifacts from the SKZ, on view at Municipal Bonds in the Dogpatch, featuring student work from the...
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In SF Art Show, Anti-Immigrant and Anti-Queer Policies Are ‘Nothing New’
As the new administration announces policies targeting immigrants and members of the queer community, local artists are responding with an exhibition highlighting the groups’ unity. From Feb. 15–March...
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Barbara Ramos’ Extraordinary Photos Immortalize Everyday San Franciscans
‘A Fearless Eye: The Photography of Barbara Ramos’ is out Feb. 11, 2025 from Chronicle Books. (Chronicle Books) A young, barefoot white woman with tousled blonde hair, seated in the rear doorway of a...
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Muralist Chris Gazaleh Curates a Palestinian Solidarity Show at SOMArts
When I arrive at SOMArts just hours before the opening of its new show, From the River to the Bay, curator and artist Chris Gazaleh is painting the words of Gazan poet Refaat Alareer on the wall. “If I...
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Who Needs AI Dreamscapes When We Have Leonora Carrington?
Where do dreams come from? Questions about their origin are worth asking on occasion, especially when a sampling of the work of the prolific, late Surrealist artist Leonora Carrington (1917–2011) is on...
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Sko Habibi Stitches a Sense of Home into Neon Sports Jerseys
The stories behind our names, given or chosen, preserve memories that would otherwise be lost to time. Sko Habibi is the name Jasko Begovic chose when he started identifying as an artist over two...
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At Lovers Lane, the Mission District Can Be Your Valentine
Lovers Lane block party is a celebration of artists and activists in the Mission. (Andrew Brobst) Valentine’s Day is around the corner, and whether or not you have a boo, don’t stress. On Feb. 8, the...
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Discovered on a San Francisco Park Bench, Mystery Art Makes Final Pilgrimage...
It’s an unlikely end for art found on the street — to be welcomed by a distinguished curator, celebrated at a cocktail-filled fête and ushered into the permanent collection of one of the most prominent...
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Applying The Black Panther Party’s Survival Programs to Today
The Black Panther Party For Self-Defense, founded in Oakland in 1966, was a landmark organization that uplifted the Black community by providing resources to neighborhoods neglected by the local and...
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San José Museum of Art’s Longtime Executive Director to Depart
After nearly nine years at the San José Museum of Art, Executive Director Sayre Batton has announced she will step down at the end of May. The museum will conduct a national search for her replacement....
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A New Art Book Cements the Legacy of a Bay Area Icon
Viola Frey with ‘Untitled (Prone Man)’ at her 1089 Third Street studio, Oakland, 1987. (M. Lee Fatherree) Even if you don’t know who Viola Frey is, chances are you’ve seen a Viola Frey. The prolific...
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Amy Tan’s Literary Archive to Be Housed at UC Berkeley’s Bancroft Library
Bay Area literary icon Amy Tan has an archive so large it fills over 60 boxes. It’s a collection that’s been growing for decades. Among the treasures are Tan’s personal journals, her correspondence...
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