This Thursday SFMOMA’s Now Playing series returns with San Francisco– and Los Angeles–based multimedia art duo Los Jaichackers (Spanglish for hijackers), who have curated a night of experimental music, performance, and lectures. It’s going to be super! Please welcome Eamon Ore-Giron and Julio Cesar Morales:

When Frank Smigiel asked us ... More

On a dull, wet day a few weeks back I wandered into the New Museum on New York’s Bowery. It was a pleasant surprise to see the sign for Siege, a new show by the British sculptor Phyllida Barlow, whose work I had first encountered at the Serpentine Gallery in London some years earlier. Returning to works of art that you love is much like opening t... More

In celebration of the 75th anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge, Open Space commissioned a number of new posts from artists and writers. Hughen/Starkweather have spent three years investigating the environmental, financial, historical, and political intricacies of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge, and their ongoing series of artworks Approach... More

In celebration of the 75th anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge, Open Space has commissioned a number of new works from artists and writers. Please welcome poet and artistic director of the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church in New York Stacy Szymaszek.

THE BRIDGE

Be with me, St. Francis, now —
witness before the charter ends
my midlife specter

Of mixed descent sun and moon aligned
king tides gleam on the mall
all the invisible heart valves pumping
and yawning, look for the swimming
base of a friend, the hand of man
has not spoiled th... More

In celebration of the 75th anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge, Open Space commissioned a number of new posts from artists and writers. Hughen/Starkweather have spent three years investigating the environmental, financial, historical, and political intricacies of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge, and their ongoing series of artworks Approach... More

Anticipating the arrival of the museum blockbuster exhibition King Tut (1979), Richard Kamler envisioned a grand procession of three straw pyramids which would sail underneath the Golden Gate Bridge and briefly rest on the ruins of the Sutro Baths, before being redistributed to local farms for mulch. I thought of Kamler’s unrealized proposal when... More

When our pictures are taken we want to look good. And when we don’t look good, we cringe. I’m thinking of the ubiquitous profile pic on Facebook where the camera is set extremely high and pointing downwards so the person’s eyes look huge, their face thin and elongated with a pointy chin, no problematic neck; if shoulders appear, they’re teeny, like a cartoon character’s. People post such distortions because they want to look good.  And last February, when I sat on Zina Al-Shukri’s couch in her Dogpatch studio as she painted my port... More

In celebration of the 75th anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge, Open Space commissioned a number of new posts from artists and writers. As part of the series, we asked Aimee Shapiro, Artists-in-Education program manager at Southern Exposure, to work with two artists from SoEx’s Artists-in-Education program. Both youth artists are members of... More

In celebration of the 75th anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge, Open Space commissioned a number of new posts from artists and writers. Hughen/Starkweather have spent three years investigating the environmental, financial, historical, and political intricacies of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, and their ongoing series of artworks Approach, ... More

In celebration of the 75th anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge, Open Space is hosting a suite of posts in tribute. As part of the series, we asked Aimee Shapiro, Artists-in-Education program manager at Southern Exposure (SoEx), to work with two artists from SoEx’s Artists-in-Education program. Both youth artists are members of SoEx’s ... More

In celebration of the 75th anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge, Open Space has commissioned a number of new posts. Please welcome writer and editor Victoria Gannon, on falling, inevitability, and Jasper Johns.

Every time we drive over a bridge we talk about earthquakes. It’s usually at night, when one city is behind us and another is not yet in... More

In celebration of the 75th anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge, Open Space commissioned a number of new posts from artists and writers. Hughen/Starkweather have spent three years investigating the environmental, financial, historical, and political intricacies of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge, and their ongoing series of artworks Approach... More

In celebration of the 75th anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge, Open Space commissioned a number of new posts from artists and writers. Hughen/Starkweather have spent three years investigating the environmental, financial, historical, and political intricacies of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge, and their ongoing series of artworks Approach... More

In celebration of the 75th anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge, Open Space has commissioned a number of special posts from artists and writers. Please welcome artist, historian, and urbanist Jeannene Przyblyski.

Here and There, Now and Then at the Golden Gate
Excerpts from the Case Files of the Bureau of Urban Secrets
Jeannene Przyblyski, corresp... More

This weekend — Sunday, May 27, to be exact — that most iconic of San Francisco landmarks, the Golden Gate Bridge, turns a majestic 75 years old, trailing our own Bay Area institution by just a couple of years. (Strange to think SFMOMA’s even older than the bridge, no?) In celebration of this special anniversary, SFMOMA and Open Space join 75 other cultural institutions around the Bay Area in wishing the Golden Gate well, with an extended series of tribute posts throughout the long holiday weekend, beginning this morning. Look for post... More

If you have ever read the Bible you figure out pretty quickly that if you want to get anywhere in life you pretty much have to devote yourself to either God or the Devil. For example, Robert Johnson became a famous guitar legend by making a deal with the Devil at a lonely crossroads in Mississippi. Faust sold his soul to Mephistopheles for the lov... More

Last fall I taught a course called “Queer Modernism” at California College of the Arts. As a class project, my students traced a queer itinerary through the permanent collection at SFMOMA, culminating in a queer audio tour of the museum’s holdings. Each student first wrote an introduction to queer art at SFMOMA, explaining the interest of our... More

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Just released online, a few of Anthony Discenza’s older video works.

I find myself drawn to Open Space when I have a story to tell about “behind-the-scenes” experiences I have in my role as a curator in rural Northern California. I was recently invited to Redding to judge the 62nd Annual Student Art Show at Shasta Junior College. It was an experience that I am still thinking about two weeks after the fact.

Back in the days when the NEA was a tad wealthier than it is today, there was a wonderful program that sent practitioners around the country to do site visits at peer organizations. The ostensible ... More

For one night only, on Wednesday, May 9, the Berkeley Art Museum presented In Protest, a collection of protest posters commissioned by a variety of artists and writers, including Zarouhie Abdalian, John Baldessari, Amy Balkin, Amy Franceschini, Doug Hall, Paul Kos, Tony Labat, Shaun O’Dell, Rigo 23, Piero Golia, Jordan Kantor, Kevin Killian, ... More