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Low Light Darkroom Wants to Be San Francisco’s Hub for DIY Photography
Aficionados of film photography will soon be able to access a new photo lab opening in San Francisco. Low Light Darkroom, a nonprofit, volunteer-led lab opening in Union Square, will offer studio time...
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Steuart Pittman Paints in a Personal Language of Watery Abstraction
Steuart Pittman, ‘Hessel / Cedarville,’ 2025. (Traywick Contemporary) Steuart Pittman loves a hard edge. In all his pared-down abstract paintings, whether they’re large or small, oil or acrylic, the...
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The Roxie Screens 40-Plus Years of Films by Lynn Marie Kirby
For decades, San Francisco artist Lynn Marie Kirby has created artwork that defies easy classification. In part, this is because she is a natural collaborator, and her work shifts and grows in...
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SFMOMA’s Ruth Asawa Retrospective Honors the Patron Saint of San Francisco Arts
Ruth Asawa making wire sculptures in 1954. (Nat Farbman/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock) Is there any artist as locally beloved as Ruth Asawa? For all of Wayne Thiebaud’s vertiginous streets...
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AI Art Flyer Brings Controversy to Oakland First Fridays
The AI-produced flyer used by Oakland’s First Fridays. (Oakland First Fridays) The spring flyer for Oakland’s First Fridays street fair shows people strolling on an urban avenue past a building...
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Nobody Asked for This
On April 10, Marco Cochrane’s 45-foot-tall metal sculpture of a nude woman, titled R-Evolution, was unveiled to the public at San Francisco’s Embarcadero Plaza. She will stand there, her butt facing...
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You Could Be the Exploratorium’s Next Artist in Residence
For the first time in its 56-year history, the Exploratorium has announced an open call for its next artist in residence. The San Francisco science and art museum has hosted an artist-in-residence...
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Revisiting the 1968 SFSU Student Strike While Trump Targets Campus Protesters
The longest student strike in U.S. history was held at San Francisco State University, then known as San Francisco State College, from the fall of 1968 to the spring of 1969. Organized by the Black...
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Isaac Julien Dreams Up a Beautiful and Urgent World at the de Young
In Isaac Julien’s thrilling show, I Dream a World at the de Young, the shifting images on gallery screens seem to respond to one another with something approaching sentience. If montage is the language...
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Bay Area Groups Reel From Trump’s Cuts to the National Endowment of the...
Bay Area arts and cultural groups are reeling after the Trump administration’s revocation earlier this month of previously awarded federal grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Living...
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Artist Projects ‘Money for Science, Not Oligarchs’ onto UC Berkeley Building
‘Money for science, not oligarghs’ by Michele Pred, projected onto a UC Berkeley building, April 2025. (Courtesy of Michele Pred) Last night, in solidarity with the National Day of Action for Higher...
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A Very Strange Alcatraz Painting From a 1973 KQED Auction Is Back Up for Sale
Back in 1973, as KQED was preparing for its now infamous annual televised fundraising auction, a call was sent out to the public. “Dear artists,” it read. “Please send us artwork that we can sell so we...
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So You Wanna Go to Art School?
When Eli Meza applied to college in 2018, they were looking for a place to study art with an interdisciplinary approach. Mills, still a women’s college at the time, offered Meza exactly what they were...
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Kenneth Rainin Foundation Awards $100,000 to Four Bay Area Artists
Four Bay Area artists have been awarded grants of $100,000 each from the Kenneth Rainin Foundation as part of its 2025 Rainin Arts Fellowship. This year’s fellows are Brenda Wong Aoki, Christy Chan,...
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This Mission District Art Gallery Wants Submissions From High School Teens
The clock is ticking for student artists in San Francisco to submit their work for a major Mission District art show held in May and June. For the past two weeks, the Drawing Room Annex at 599 Valencia...
View ArticleArtists Wanted for Trump’s National Garden of American Heroes
The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is issuing a call for artists interested in creating statues for President Trump’s National Garden of American Heroes. The federal agency says the grant...
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A Massive Oakland Mural Uplifts the Town’s Culture of Resistance
No matter how much Oakland changes, the Town’s creative resistance remains irrepressible, from the Black Panthers and United Farm Workers of the ’60s to today’s hip-hop and graffiti movements. Even...
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Let Bob Ross Guide Your Brush at WorkshopSF
Every first Friday of the month, the Haight Street space WorkshopSF opens its doors for a free art party, introducing visitors to a sampling of the classes they offer on a daily basis. But nothing...
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With ‘Art Museum From Bed,’ M Eilo Loans Sculptures to Disabled San Franciscans
If you’re a disabled San Franciscan who can’t make it to a museum, art can come to you thanks to Art Museum From Bed by M Eilo. Eilo loans out interactive sculptures, or Sensation Models, that one can...
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Josué Rojas Reuses the City’s Trash to Tell a Distinctly San Francisco Story
Artist Josué Rojas and his ‘Pupusa Face’ characters at Recology in San Francisco. (Pendarvis Harshaw/KQED) At the southernmost edge of San Francisco, between the Cow Palace and what was once...
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The American Government No Longer Values the Arts
On the afternoon of May 2, when arts nonprofits across the country began receiving news that their grants from the National Endowment for the Arts were terminated or withdrawn, the Bay Area Video...
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7 Must-See Museum and Gallery Shows This Summer
Be sure to check out our full 2025 Summer Arts Guide to live music, movies, art, theater, festivals and more in the Bay Area. We have arrived at the summer months during a chaotic time for the arts....
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Get Away From the News This Summer With These 7 Bay Area Diversions
Be sure to check out our full 2025 Summer Arts Guide to live music, movies, art, theater, festivals and more in the Bay Area. You, reading this: put your phone down! (After you read this, that is.) Our...
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Your Complete Guide to Summer Fun in the Bay Area Is Here
Looking for events, concerts, festivals and movies in the Bay Area this summer? Catch E-40 and More This Summer When it comes to things to do in the region, you can count on KQED’s Arts & Culture...
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Pacita Abad’s Archive Arrives at the Place Where Her Career Started
Before her death in 2004, the artist Pacita Abad traveled to over 60 countries and made more than 5,000 artworks. Only lung cancer stopped her; she died at age 58 in Singapore after completing a...
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At BAMPFA, the African American Quilt Show We’ve Been Waiting For
We’ve waited a long time for a glimpse at the true scope of the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive’s African American quilt collection. When Eli Leon’s bequest to the museum was announced in...
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At Fort Point, An Ode to ‘Black Gold,’ Then and Now
Directly beneath the Golden Gate Bridge, Fort Point’s red brick ceilings and white walls are currently a three-story display of fine art. While the works highlight the golden legacies of African...
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How the Compton’s Cafeteria Riot Supercharged San Francisco’s Fight for Trans...
Editor’s note: This story is part of ‘Trans Bay: A History of San Francisco’s Gender-Diverse Community.’ From June 9–20, we’re publishing stories about transgender artists and activists who shaped...
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Videos at Asian Art Museum Capture the Anxiety and Explosions of ‘Everyday War’
Standing in Yuan Goang-Ming’s Everyday War at the Asian Art Museum, I was periodically startled by a loud “BANG!” The sound emanated from the dinner table in the center of the gallery, a sculptural...
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A Radiant Show of Intangible, Unclassifiable Things at K. Imperial
There are just a few days left to visit Renée Gertler’s radiant solo show at K. Imperial Fine Art, a show that’s only been open by appointment since its May 8 opening. Let me digress for a moment. This...
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