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Sometimes in New York this thing happens – you are going out and suddenly you find yourself surrounded by folks you know from San Francisco. After a while you might pause, stare up at the sky and ask to nobody in particular, “Where are they all coming from?”

Even when you talk to complete strangers – if you talk with them lo... More

I’m not the kind of cat that’s going to cut off an ear if I can’t do something.
Bob Dylan (musician and poet)

What do I care about the purring of one who cannot love, like the cat?
Friedrich Nietzsche (philosopher)

My house is run, essentially, by an adopted, fully clawed cat with a mean nature.
Anthony Bourdain (chef and author)

The order of the world is always right — such is the judgment of God. For God has departed, but he has left his judgment behind, the way the Cheshire Cat left his grin.
Jean Baudrillard (philosophe... More

I almost spilled coffee on myself yesterday when I read this bombastic headline in the New Republic: “How Occupy Changed Contemporary Art.” Then I laughed out loud.

It’s just that I die inside a little bit more each time when I read yet another “art review” written by someone purporting to be an authority on the subjec... More

It’s easy to understand modern art. If it hangs on a wall, it’s a painting. If you can walk around it, it’s a sculpture.

What do you get if you cross a painter with a boxer? Muhammad Dali.

What happened when a ship carrying red paint collided with a ship carrying blue paint? Both crews were marooned.

How many surrealists does it take to change a light bulb? Two. One to hold the giraffe and the other to fill the bathtub with brightly colored machine tools.

Recently a guy in Paris nearly got away with stealing several paintings from the Lo... More

Some museum staff were recently relocated to new office digs in preparation for our big expansion. Working late one night and perhaps under the influence of too much fluorescent lighting, I took it upon myself to repurpose this prime office real estate. You know what they say, when life gives you some drab, recently vacated office space, make some ... More

Has social media made us all stupid? During the Boston manhunt for the marathon bombers, the #tweeters, the Facebookers, and Reddit users spread all kinds of erroneous rumors, provided tons of false leads, and misidentified several individuals as the bombers. If that wasn’t bad enough, several mainstream media outlets ran with stories that weren’t true.

First, during the Boston manhunt, CNN’s John King breathlessly reported the bomber was a dark-skinned male who had just been arrested. Of course, that went viral immediately. U... More

In light of the insanity that has gripped Boston for the past few days — the bombings at the marathon’s finish line, the manhunt that resulted in two deaths, and the final capture of one of the bombers — I thought I would share an art piece I made back there in 2009 but never showed anyone.

I was walking on the grounds of the public lib... More

Watching the mesmerizing coverage of the Mars Rover landing this summer, I was reminded of video artist George Bolling’s 1974 pioneering, real-time broadcast event Jupiter Flyby which attracted over 25,000 visitors to the Exploratorium in San Francisco between November 26 and December 2 of that year. During the event, Bolling was stationed at NAS... More

Nobody wants to get that call, but at 3:41 am this morning I got it. Carlos Villa had passed away. I didn’t want to write an obituary, and so I am not mentioning his numerous awards and such – so this is not an obituary – OK?

It’s just that I had worked with him at the San Francisco Art Institute and saw how he had been a role model and father figure for so many students in the Bay Area and not saying something about that doesn’t seem right.

Also – it’s worth noting that while a cast of colorful charact... More

Receipt of Delivery is a weekly series featuring Bay Area exhibition mailers selected from the SFMOMA Research Library’s collection of artists’ ephemera.

“Crawling on my belly in the garden, I photographed snails at their eye level and sometimes so close up the camera bumped into the snail. These images were often of exquisite beauty. I proje... More

A reply to another unusual inquiry received by SFMOMA 2/18/13:

Dear Mary Jane,

We are so happy you thought of SFMOMA to fulfill your salad needs for your wife’s birthday. I am hoping to clarify a few things to be sure we have your order together, as 3pm quickly approaches.

When you say chicken grilled with Caesar salad, do you want the chicken gri... More

Receipt of Delivery is a weekly series featuring Bay Area exhibition mailers selected from the SFMOMA Research Library’s collection of artists’ ephemera.

Adrian Piper staged a number of collaborative performance events entitled Funk Lessons (1982–84) in which participants were invited to get down and party together. In the process of learning to discuss, dance, and listen to funk music, the events opened up individual awareness of the complex personal associations of this popular dance form with racial and cultural boundaries. The experie... More

Receipt of Delivery is a weekly series featuring Bay Area exhibition mailers selected from the SFMOMA Research Library’s collection of artists’ ephemera.

“Probably nobody knows what Diane Arbus as a person was all about. As a photographer, some people admired her work, others reviled it and some simply ignored it. Rarely, if ever, have I seen such deification of a personality and that person’s work as has followed Diane Arbus’ suicide. [...] It was with singular visceral reaction that I received Edmund Shea’s announcement of... More

Receipt of Delivery is a weekly series featuring Bay Area exhibition mailers selected from the SFMOMA Research Library’s collection of artists’ ephemera.

“Owner of the gallery and sponsor of the happening is W.O. Thomas Jr., ex-cable car gripman and self-taught painter and sculptor. He spent two years preparing the event, having completely re... More

Receipt of Delivery is a weekly series featuring Bay Area exhibition mailers selected from the SFMOMA Research Library’s collection of artists’ ephemera. More on the artist and industrial music pioneer Monte Cazazza here and here.

Receipt of Delivery is a weekly series featuring Bay Area exhibition mailers selected from the SFMOMA Research Library’s collection of artists’ ephemera.

Poster text: “Eleanor Coppola has designated a number of windows in all parts of San Francisco as visual landmarks. Her purpose in this project is to bring to the attention of the whole comm... More

Receipt of Delivery is a weekly series featuring Bay Area exhibition mailers selected from the SFMOMA Research Library’s collection of artists’ ephemera.

“The New Museum of Modern Art brought some healthy fresh air to the Bay Area gallery scene for two short years in the early 1970s [1971–73]. A collective of nearly 20 artists put the museu... More

Receipt of Delivery is a weekly series featuring Bay Area exhibition mailers selected from the SFMOMA Research Library’s collection of artists’ ephemera.

For quite a few years I was lucky enough to have some friends living in Paris. Most of them were going to École des Beaux-Arts for photography. They would let me come stay with them for a week or two and we would go out to clubs, drink, smoke cigarettes, and spend half the day making and then eating breakfast in our underwear. But on one trip I ex... More

Receipt of Delivery is a weekly series featuring Bay Area exhibition mailers selected from the SFMOMA Research Library’s collection of artists’ ephemera.

“Through the miracle of science, the Art in Space Center has built a state-of-the-art rocket containing all the vital technology for a successful liftoff into the outer limits of our galaxy.... More

Happy Holidays from all of us at Open Space — see you in the New Year!

Receipt of Delivery is a weekly series featuring Bay Area exhibition mailers selected from the SFMOMA Research Library’s collection of artists’ ephemera.

“The Six Gallery was established in September 1954 with the intention that there might exist in the San Francisco area some outlet for the works of local artists who had heretofore been met with varying degrees of indifference, disinterest, or hostility by the larger commercial galleries and museums of art, where the concern seems to lie less with local, contemporary artists, than with o... More

Receipt of Delivery is a weekly series featuring Bay Area exhibition mailers selected from the SFMOMA Research Library’s collection of artists’ ephemera.

“This piece was a long time ago, but was at a special time for me, a good time for my work. San Francisco was the breeding ground, the creative space, in which I could dream of Victorian lad... More

Receipt of Delivery is a weekly series featuring Bay Area exhibition mailers selected from the SFMOMA Research Library’s collection of artists’ ephemera.

“I began tending honeybees as preparation for a performance/film project called Immersion [1973–76]. At the time the 16mm film was a natural extension of my sculptural site investigations with moths, wild bees, living systems, harvesting and decay cycles, weathering and erosion processes — all the projects in one way or another involving a human intervention, gesture, or residual tra... More

Receipt of Delivery is a weekly series featuring Bay Area exhibition mailers selected from the SFMOMA Research Library’s collection of artists’ ephemera.

Today let us bow to the Mail Queen, aka Patricia Tavenner,and her long reign as a contributor to and curator within the global network of mail art and artists’ stamps. The Oakland-based artist adopted this nom de plume around the time that she began teaching courses on the “hidden” history of women artists. In 1972 she cofounded the Northern California Women’s Caucu... More