Open Space, the blog of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, is a lively forum for critical and personal writings and media about art, visual culture, and issues specific to the Bay Area. Our aim is to provide a platform for, and a window to, the life and vitality of the art-engaged public of our dynamic region, and beyond.
Open Space takes its name, and spirit, from a small but influential Bay Area poetry magazine that appeared in 1964. Edited by Stan Persky and presided over by legendary poet of the San Francisco Renaissance, Jack Spicer, and with the strict dictum that no copies be circulated outside the Bay Area, Persky’s Open Space included only local writers, whose works-in-progress were to be published as submitted, without censorship or constraint. This community-based, Bay Area-centric magazine also printed the work of many local artists of the time.
Following this model, every few months we invite a new group of local writers and artists to contribute here on Open Space, in an editorial free zone, about all things Bay Area. Our external writers do not write on assignment from SFMOMA; you can expect the occasional changing of the guard to give a changing shape to the content, as well. We also commission single pieces of writing on a variety of subjects, and SFMOMA curators and staff post regularly.
Our drop-down link lists in the sidebar are designed to give visitors from anywhere in the world a sense of the range and diversity of venues for art, offline and on, around Northern California. If we’re missing your favorite spot, let us know!
We hope you find our magazine as informative, curious, and surprising as we always do! No one ever knows exactly what will happen here.
Suggestions, complaints, praise, inquiry? Always welcome! Send email to suzanne at sfmoma dot org.
