Comics Dealer Says $85,000 in Books Stolen at Convention
A Florida comics dealer says books worth tens of thousands were stolen at a Tampa convention, including two rare editions that marked the first appearance of Spider-Man. Tampa police say Rick Whitelock...
View ArticleWho’s Behind the Colorful Lights at San Francisco City Hall?
Bay Curious listener Katie Emigh loves walking by San Francisco’s City Hall after sunset. The building’s ominous granite exterior is lit up dramatically every night. Most nights the lights are white....
View ArticleCARTOONS: Sketches of Berkeley Protest After Canceled Ann Coulter Talk
Sketches of the April 27 protest at UC Berkeley organized ahead of a planned Ann Coulter speech. Though the talk was called off, protesters still descended on the campus and city of Berkeley. <img...
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Student Project to Beautify Oakland Underpass Hampered by Caltrans
The line of children marched up West Street in West Oakland Wednesday afternoon chanting “Art is peace, art is peace.” Just a few blocks away, 18 fourth graders from Hoover Elementary started a new...
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Roz Chast’s ‘Cartoon Memoirs’ Finds Comic Relief in a Neurotic World
Even as a child, Roz Chast was not a happy-go-lucky kid. She saw the world as a scary and unsettling place. She still does. But she’s turned her fears and neuroses into almost four decades of art,...
View ArticleSecurity Guards for S.F. Museums Say They’re Being Denied Full-Time Work
Three San Francisco art museums — the de Young, Legion of Honor and Asian Art Museum — are facing criticism from their security guards, who say the museums’ executives are manipulating their schedules...
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Dogs are People Too, Inside the Fantastical World of Roy De Forest
Eight years ago, when I first arrived in the Bay Area, I knew next to nothing about Roy De Forest and his UC Davis compatriots (including William T. Wiley, Robert Arneson, Peter Saul, the legendary...
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Cy and Gabe’s Picks: A Rapper on a Journey, Raining Banjos, and a Farewell
KQED’s Cy Musiker and Gabe Meline share their picks for great events around the Bay Area this week. Our entertainment cup spills over this week with stuff we couldn’t quite fit on the show. Smuin...
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Crayola Gives The People What They Want: A New Blue Crayon
If you were feeling blue after Crayola’s March announcement that the company would be retiring the bright yellow hue, Dandelion, you’ll soon have a new blue crayon to color in your tears with. The...
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In ‘Tiny Bubbles,’ a Parody Social Network and Experimental Podcast
As I scroll through my “Garbage Feed” on the online parody site Garbage City Social Network, I can see that its founder, artist J. Otto Seibold, has posted another photo — this time of burning money —...
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Once-Suppressed Dorothea Lange Photos Capture Wartime Paranoia
When I visited the site of the Manzanar War Relocation Center during the foggy months following Sept. 11, 2001, most of the original buildings had already been erased from the landscape, so my most...
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‘Road to the Summer of Love’ a Snapshot of Sweet ’60s Madness
Back in the late ’80s, I found Ralph J. Gleason’s paperback The Jefferson Airplane and the San Francisco Sound for $3 at Green Apple Books. I never thought the next copy I’d see would be in a glass...
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Chicano Art Wields a Sharper Political Edge in Post-Election California
Chicano art never really went out of style in California; it was born during the political foment of the 1960s and ’70s, and it’s bubbled along since then for decades. Now there’s a new wave of the...
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There’s No ‘I’ in ‘RELAY,’ Where the Emerging Art Scene is a Team Sport
We don’t have much in the way of regional surveys here in the Bay Area. There’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts’ Bay Area Now (usually a triennial, though BAN8 isn’t returning until 2018), and SFMOMA’s...
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At Royal NoneSuch, Emily Mast and Henna Vainio Make Life Strange
Since seeing Emily Mast and Henna Vainio: Step of Two at Oakland’s Royal NoneSuch Gallery (on view through June 4), I can’t get T. Rex’s 1973 song, “Life is Strange,” out of my head. With its overly...
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Your Trash is Treasure for Three Artists at Recology San Francisco
For just a few hours over the course of May 19-23, Bay Area artists Carrie Hott, Nathan Byrne and Cybele Lyle will display the results of four months of artistic (and manual) labor at Recology San...
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Suzie & Gabe’s Picks: Rockin’ the Front Porch, Talkin’ with OGs, and Paintin’...
KQED’s Suzie Racho and Gabe Meline share their picks for great events around the Bay Area this week. The seasons are changing, the sun is out, and this week we’ve got not one, not two, not three but...
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Basquiat Painting Becomes Priciest Work Ever Sold by a U.S. Artist
Jean-Michel Basquiat joined “joined the pantheon of great, great artists” Thursday night, when the late painter’s 1982 work Untitled sold for a record-breaking $110.5 million at auction — the highest...
View Article‘They Call Us Monsters’: A New Lens on Teens Facing Life in Prison
Back in 2013, California was debating whether to give teenagers who committed violent crimes a second chance. The proposed bill, SB 260, would allow juveniles to become eligible for parole earlier in...
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Josh Faught Weaves Queer History and Pop Culture into Monumental Cozies
In South San Francisco, Josh Faught’s studio is filled with multiple in-progress pieces: a diptych bound for 99 Cents or Less at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit; additional works for a...
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