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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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‘Skateboarding San Francisco’ Celebrates a Concrete Playground
At the opening of the San Francisco Public Library’s newest exhibition, the decibels reached decidedly un-library-like levels. In fact, it was an absolute party. There was DJ, a bar. At one point, a...
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A New Magazine, the ‘San Francisco Review of Whatever,’ Comes to Town
In her editor’s note for the very first issue of the San Francisco Review of Whatever, Elisabeth Nicula bounces from topic to topic in pithy paragraphs, covering tennis, constellations, Trevor Paglen’s...
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In Paul McCartney’s Photos at the de Young, a Wide-Eyed Look at a Distant...
We all know, many times over, what Paul McCartney’s ears hear. But what do his eyes see? Specifically, what were his eyes attuned to during the Beatles’ meteoric rise in the early years of the band?...
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Esteban Samayoa Paints the Art of Surviving
Though not every artist is from “the struggle,” anyone who’s ever survived tough times is inherently a creative person. That notion is at the heart of Esteban Raheem Abdul Raheem Samayoa’s artwork. A...
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Eclectic, Newly Unearthed Films to Be Screened for the First Time in Decades
Three years ago, with a grant from the Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web, a small team of archivists sped up their work of digitizing films in the Prelinger Archives, Megan and Rick...
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Temporary Public Art for Great Highway Unveiled
It’s difficult to get San Franciscans to agree on pretty much anything when it comes to the Great Highway. But Lucas Lux, president of Friends of Ocean Beach Park, says consensus did emerge when it...
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A Ride on the ‘Arty Bus’ with Oakland Painter Sloane Gross
Art lovers in the Bay Area are often faced with a funny conundrum: art is everywhere, but given traffic and the geographic size of the nine-county region, it’s hard to get to all of it. That was the...
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In Portraits of Tenderloin Residents, a Delicate Balance of Art and Hardship
On the corner of Jones and Ellis Streets in San Francisco, there’s an open-air art gallery filled with images of the very people who reside in the Tenderloin. One block from Glide Memorial Church,...
View Articledi Rosa to Open Exhibition Space in San Francisco, Lay Off Staff
The di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art, a Napa museum with an extensive collection of post-war Northern California art, announced today that it will transform two of its spaces into permanent rental...
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Susan Weil Graces SF With Seven Decades of Dazzling Art
It’s difficult to compete with the view from COL Gallery, which looks out from Ghirardelli Square to Aquatic Cove, Alcatraz and a sparkling San Francisco Bay. But if any artist’s up to the task, it’s...
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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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