Have you been training to improve your art stamina? You’re going to need some serious endurance to attend all the excellent visual arts events on the horizon. (This sports analogy will make more sense later.) This September, October and November, we’ve got one-off festivals, big ticket museum shows, exciting local gallery offerings and institutional debuts. As is pretty much always the case in these parts, so much is happening. Here’s just a little taste of what the fall has in store.
We can all likely picture the elegant, effortlessly balanced hanging sculptures of Alexander Calder, or his muscular “stabiles,” scattered across city plazas and museum sculpture gardens. But these are the public-facing works. Calder also made much more intimate objects for himself and loved ones: jewelry, furniture, utensils, ingenious toaster contraptions and baby rattles. Drawing from the museum’s collection, this show gives us a glimpse into Calder’s seemingly tireless creative energies, which he often funneled into gestures of care and play.
For a dose of more contemporary art that follows in Calder’s footsteps, the accompanying exhibition Still in Motion presents work by four Calder Prize recipients: Tara Donovan, Jill Magid, Tomás Saraceno and Aki Sasamoto.
A scene from a performance in last year’s festival in San Franciso’s Chinatown. (Henrik Kam)
Sept. 7, 2024, 3–10 p.m.
800 Grant Ave. and throughout Chinatown, San Francisco
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For Chinatown’s third annual contemporary art festival, organized by Edge on the Square, 21 artists and collaboratives will fill the streets to play music; present videos, murals and performances; and engage audiences in participatory artworks. This year’s event has an elemental theme, with each location’s programming organized by the categories of earth, fire, metal, water or air. There’s a lot going all day, so I recommend showing up for the kickoff with LionDanceME, visiting Walking Stories (Edge on the Square’s current show), sampling food from vendors and local restaurants, and simply wandering through the neighborhood in search of your new favorite artist during this dreamy, entirely free event.
Mildred Howard, Still from ‘The Time and Space of Now,’ 2021. (Courtesy the artist and 500 Capp Street)
Mildred Howard, a key Bay Area artist for over five decades, flexes her multidisciplinary prowess this fall with a multi-venue exhibition titled Collaborating With The Muses Part One. The party starts at Anglim/Trimble with a series of large-scale photographic prints made from rediscovered 8mm film from Howard’s childhood. At pt. 2, the artist will present an installation inspired by jazz pianist Bill Evans’ “Peace Piece.” (This show will include additional contributions from Bay Area musicians.) And on Sept. 21, Howard will show her film The Time and Space of Now at 500 Capp Street, which premiered at the Institute of Contemporary Art San José in 2022. A portion of that original installation will remain on view at 500 Capp until late October. I can’t think of a more fitting celebration of the ongoing work of a local, singular talent.
A digital rendering of the Dr. Maya Angelou monument ‘Portrait of a Phenomenal Woman’ by Lava Thomas. (Courtesy of the artist)
Sept. 19, 2024, 10 a.m.–2 p.m.
San Francisco Main Library, Larkin Street entrance Register for a free ticket
Five years after she was selected to create a monument honoring Dr. Maya Angelou for the San Francisco Public Library (and subsequently un-selected and re-selected, insert eye-roll here), library patrons and art-lovers will get to celebrate the unveiling of Lava Thomas’ Portrait of a Phenomenal Woman. The eight-foot-tall bronze sculpture, estimated to weigh 6,900 pounds, is a giant book with Angelou’s portrait on one side and a quote from the writer and poet on the other. “The library helps you to see, not only that you are not alone, but that you’re not really any different from everyone else,” the quote reads. “A human being is a human being.”
Thomas’ piece is the first monument commemorating a Black woman in the city’s Civic Art Collection — but hopefully not the last.
Juana Alicia, ‘X’majan,’ 2020. (Courtesy the artist)
Sept. 21, 2024–Jan. 5, 2025
Sonoma Valley Museum of Art, Sonoma
Juana Alicia is perhaps best known for her murals in the Bay Area and Mexico, including her work on the epic Maestrapeace, which wraps around San Francisco’s Women’s Building. But her artwork actually spans a wide range of media. It’s her illustration work for La X’tabay: The Book of Books that is the focus of this SVMA show. Created in collaboration with author Tirso González Araiza, La X’tabay is based on a Yucatec Mayan myth about a beautiful, seductive (and demonic) woman.
Alicia’s illustrations, which will be displayed in codex form, are rendered in a striking palette of delicate white lines scratched into a black ground. Also on view: colorful paintings of people and landscapes informed by her life spent between Berkeley, California and Mérida, Yucatán, Mexico. For those who missed Alicia’s solo show at the San Francisco Arts Commission last year (also curated by Marco Antonio Flores), Cenote de Sueños is your second chance for a dive into this prolific, versatile artist’s work.
Michael Bennett, ‘Pews,’ 2023. (Courtesy of William Stuart)
Oct. 2, 2024–March 2, 2025
Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco
During the long months of the pandemic lockdown, we all learned how the design, furnishings and arrangement of our interior spaces can be conducive to some activities and distracting during others, and can radically affect our emotional wellbeing. (Down the street from my house, the local hardware store did brisk business in DIY supplies; the shopkeepers were run ragged.) This show at MoAD, curated by Key Jo Lee, gathers 16 contemporary designers and artists whose work can foster a sense of safety, belonging and Black joy. Through furniture, wall coverings, lighting, ceramics and “other atmospherics,” Liberatory Living highlights the healing and necessary function of beauty in everyday surroundings.
Maryam Yousif, ‘Tamur Land’ (installation view), 2023. (Courtesy the artist and The Pit, Los Angeles)
Oct. 5, 2024–Jan. 26, 2025
Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco
After getting her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2017, ceramicist Maryam Yousif has been on an unstoppable tear, with exhibitions up and down the state, in Chicago, Asheville, Denver and New York. Riverbend marks her first museum solo exhibition, and she’ll be unveiling a site-specific installation that builds on her personal vocabulary of figures, “cosmic bags” and symbols pulled from inspirations both old and new. Among her reference points are Mesopotamian and Assyrian mythology and the art, architecture and pop culture of Iraq. Yousif is an accomplished artist with the ability to combine source material without overburdening her compelling standalone objects. To see that work expand into an installation — as an opening exhibition for the ICA San Francisco’s new Montgomery Street location — will be an absolute treat.
I have to admit I’d never heard of Tamara de Lempicka before the announcement of this show. Born in 1894 in Poland, de Limpicka entered the Paris salons of the 1920s, became a baroness, had relationships with both men and women, circled the world three times by ship and had her ashes scattered over the Mexican volcano Popocatépetl. Her life was eventful — dramatic, even — and her artwork, especially from the Art Deco era, captures a fast-moving, devil-may-care attitude. This show collects over 100 pieces from her career, including portraits of society figures and insouciant women that are still thrilling, full of taut angles and high-contrast shading.
Sam McKinniss, ‘Ameriquest Field in Arlington, TX, Sept. 3, 2006,’ 2022. (Charles Benton/David Kordansky Gallery)
SFMOMA gets sporty
Aug. 17, 2024–Sept. 2025
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
In a suite of group exhibitions, Bay Area Walls commissions and accompanying events, the Bay Area’s largest museum is going all in for sports. Three shows have already opened: Unity through Skateboarding, curated by Jeffrey Cheung and Gabriel Ramirez and focused on the history of LGBTQ+, BIPOC and women skateboarders; and When the World Is Watching and Count Me In, which tap into the societal issues raised during international competitions. Soon, we’ll get three new sports-themed murals from local artists Gene Luen Yang, David Huffman and Jenifer K. Wofford.
The main event will open Oct. 19 with Get In the Game: Sports, Art, Culture. If that sounds wildly broad, it absolutely is. The show will fill over 15,000 square feet of the museum with more than 200 artworks and objects. Expect depictions of amateur and professional athletes, athlete-made art, highly designed gear, interactive games and documentation of historical moments in the world of sport. Start stretching now.
Teresa Baker, ‘Untold (View from the Tower Studio), 2022. (Courtesy Wattis Institute)
Oct. 18–Dec.14, 2024
Wattis Institute, California College of the Arts, San Francisco
After packing up their Utah Street offices in May, the Wattis Institute will reopen alongside an Oct. 19 campus-wide celebration in the art space’s new digs at 145 Hooper Street. To mark the move, the Wattis’ first exhibition focuses on the natural landscape of Northern California. The group show curated by Jeanne Gerrity features Saif Azzuz, Teresa Baker, Christopher Robin Duncan, Nicki Green, Bessma Khalaf, Dionne Lee, Young Suh, Stephanie Syjuco and Zekarias Musele Thompson — artists who all have ties to the region. Expect work that engages with the landscape as a collaborator and a teacher, and touches on issues like climate change, forest fires, the Land Back movement and Indigenous life.
Dugan Aguilar, ‘Chaw’se,’ 1995. (Courtesy of Oakland Museum of California)
Nov. 8, 2024–Jan. 22, 2025
Oakland Museum of California
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In 2022, OMCA announced a major acquisition: the gift of Native photographer Dugan Aguilar’s personal archive, which included over 20,000 negatives, 600 prints, proof sheets, flyers, notes and other items from his 40-year career. It was tantalizing. How could we possibly wait two whole years to see Aguilar’s stunning black-and-white photographs of landscapes, gatherings, ceremonies and people? Time being what it is, we have now arrived in the fall of 2024, and the museum has organized a show of Aguilar’s photographs from 1982 to 2018 that document the vibrant facets of Native life in California. One of the most compelling images in the exhibition preview is ostensibly one of Buena Vista Peaks. But in the foreground, a shadow spreads across the grasses: a photographer standing beside his camera, taking it all in.
lower waypoint
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