San Francisco

Art

Mike Henderson, a Bay Area Pioneer, on His Evolution Through Abstraction

The painter and musician moved West in 1965 to attend the San Francisco Art Institute — the only desegregated art institute at the time. Currently featured in the traveling Soul of a Nation, he continues to make ambitious work.

Art

Gloriously Defiant Expressions of Cultures Perceived as Threatening to the West

At Southern Exposure in San Francisco, South Asian, Southwest Asian, and North African artists evoke the challenges they face in celebrating their cultural origins.

Music

Remembering Patrick Cowley, Pioneer of Dance Music and Occasional Composer of Porn Soundtracks

Melding psychedelia with disco at a fast tempo, Cowley helped refine a new music genre, "Hi-NRG,” which seemed ideal to enhance the hot and sweaty vibe of San Francisco’s gay clubs.

Art

An Archive Reveals a Troubling Picture of Late-19th-Century California

At the California Historical Society, paintings of the state’s beautiful vistas are shown alongside archival materials revealing a more brutal history of displacement, discrimination, and murder.

Art

An Art Film Created With Middle Schoolers in Mind

Artist Nicole Miller sees her film To the Stars as being about potential: “I want the kids to feel like they are part of the narrative of what it means to be an astronaut or a brilliant thinker.”

Art

Photography's Potential as Art and Science in Documenting Ancient Egypt

Signs and Wonders: The Photographs of John Beasley Greene features photographs that focus on ancient monuments and landscapes in Egypt and Algeria from the 1850s, rather than people.

Art

The Longing of the Diaspora in the Digital Era

In The Curved Body of a Pixel, artist Kimberly Acebo Arteche posits that despite its speed and pervasive presence, technology ultimately fails to narrow wide experiential gaps created by geographic distance.

Art

Drawing Attention to a Sinking High-Rise in San Francisco

Postcommodity’s sound piece will play every day in San Francisco until the Millennium Tower is fixed or torn down.

Art

James Tissot’s Weirdly Sexy, Astonishingly Cinematic, and Spiritual Paintings

The show is essentially a love story, arranged both chronologically and thematically, and unfolds almost like a serial novel. A precursor to Proust, say, in paint.

Art

Isamu Noguchi’s Creative Friendship With Saburo Hasegawa

By all accounts the two had an intense friendship, and together they created a new modern aesthetic.

News

In San Francisco, a Design for Maya Angelou Monument Is Approved, Then Suddenly Scrapped

Lava Thomas said she was elated to find out her proposal had been selected out of hundreds of applicants, but two weeks later she got a call saying that the sponsors will instead pursue a more figurative, traditional design.

In Brief

Thief Steals Dalí Print in Under a Minute

An audacious thief managed to snatch a Salvador Dalí etching off an easel at a San Francisco art gallery.