San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
7 art exhibitions not to miss as season heats up
Bay Area art museums and galleries are preparing for a busy spring season, offering visual arts fans a wide variety of options — from exhibitions that explore cultural movements and eras to dynamic solo shows.
While one of the most anticipated traveling shows, the de Young Museum’s “Alice Neel: People Come First,” features a New York painter, local artists are at the center of “The Art of Disability Culture” at Ruth’s Table in San Francisco and are the curators of the work on view at Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive’s “The Artist’s Eye: Tammy Rae Carland, David Huffman, Lava Thomas, John Zurier.” An 89-year-old Rat Bastard Collective icon and San Francisco artist also gets her delayed due in “Jean Conner: Collage” at the San Jose Museum of Art.
Here are a few exhibits and shows to check out this season.
“The Art of Disability Culture”: This exhibition, originally presented at the Palo Alto Arts Center in 2021, explores the experiences of people with disabilities and highlights the Bay Area’s unique place in the disability rights movement. Part of the show’s intent is to create an intergenerational dialogue between artists with disabilities who remember the struggles before the 1990 passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act and those born after it.
Featured artists include painters Katherine Sherwood and Bill Bruckner, dancer-choreographer Antoine Hunter, digital artist Michaela Oteri, photographer Anthony Tusler, and emerging artist Rachel Ungerer. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Friday or by appointment. Through May 20. Free. Masks required at all times; proof of vaccination and ID (or negative PCR test for visitors who aren’t fully vaccinated) required for public events and workshops. Ruth’s Table, 3160 21st St., S.F. 415-642-1000. ruthstable.org
“Alice Neel: People Come First”: Alice Neel was born in 1900 and has said she tried to capture the zeitgeist of the 20th century in her work, an enormous undertaking she was more than up to as a painter who focused on representing people. This exhibition, traveling from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, shows just how much of her times Neel documented, from protests and the luminaries of New York’s radical political and art scenes to her unvarnished views of motherhood and cityscapes.
New materials highlight an interlude Neel spent in San Francisco and expand on her family relationships during that time.
Although Neel died in 1984, many of the works feel contemporary in the diversity of subjects and the freshness of Neel’s technique.
9:30 a.m.-5:15 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday. Through July 10. $15-$30. Masks required for all visitors; proof of vaccination required for on-site events. De Young Museum, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, S.F. 415-7503600. deyoung.famsf.org
“The Artist’s Eye: Tammy Rae Carland, David Huffman, Lava Thomas, John Zurier”: This new exhibition is curated by four esteemed Bay Area artists — photographer Tammy Rae Carland, painter and installation artist David Huffman, multidisciplinary artist Lava Thomas and painter John Zurier — with each section revealing their own personal visions and priorities, through the work they selected from both the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive holdings and their own personal collections.
Carland emphasizes language and wordplay, while Huffman explores art history, the African American experience and his own personal history in his section. Thomas sought to highlight the stories of Black artists in BAMPFA’s collection, women in particular, while Zurier chose different styles of landscape paintings to investigate relationships to nature, solitude and distance in art.
11 a.m.-7 p.m. Wednesday-Sunday. Through July 17. $12-14. Masks required. Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, 2155 Center St., Berkeley. 510-6420808. bampfa.org
“A Living for Us All: Artists and the WPA”: During the Great Depression, the federal government established the Works Progress Administration as a way to get artists and other workers employed again. The program also provided opportunities for artists to engage with and document the communities around them.
This new exhibition is primarily culled from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s own collection of WPA art including paintings, photography, printmaking and textiles. Some works naturally focus on themes of labor during a period of economic strife; others are less literal and turn to abstraction to show the realities of the 1930s.
Several of the works created within the program became controversial for their unflinching depictions of American culture, making them even more significant documents of the times.
10 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday; 1-8 p.m. Thursday; 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Friday-Sunday. March
26-July 24. Masks required for visitors ages 2 and older. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 151 Third St., S.F. 415-3574000. sfmoma.org
“The Jim Henson Exhibition: Imagination”: This show delves inside the mind of “Muppets” creator Jim Henson, promising to be an exhibition for more than just the kid in you.
The exhibit will focus on Henson as a world builder on projects ranging from “The Muppet Show” and “Sesame Street” to cult fantasy films like “The Dark Crystal” and “Labyrinth.” Displays will show off the craft of the Henson Studios as puppet makers.
Although Henson was not Jewish, the Contemporary Jewish Museum sees his work as part of the tradition of tikkun in Jewish culture, striving to behave justly and to the benefit of society.
11 a.m.-5 p.m. Thursday-Sunday. March 31-Aug. 14. $16. Proof of vaccination and masks required. Contemporary Jewish Museum, 736 Mission St., S.F. 415-6557888. thecjm.org
“Guo Pei: Couture Fantasy”: The Chinese fashion designer is a major star in her homeland, but she is primarily known in the U.S. as the creator of Rihanna’s memorable trailing yellow gown at the 2015 Met Costume Institute Gala. This new exhibition by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco seeks to change that with samples of her work ranging from her handmade couture collections to Olympics uniforms and ready-to-wear garments.
The show will be presented in the Legion of Honor in conversation with works from the decorative arts collection.
9:30 a.m.-5:15 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday. April 16-Sept. 6. $15-$30. Masks required for all visitors; proof of vaccination required for on-site events. Legion of Honor, Lincoln Park, 100 34th Ave., S.F. 415-7503600. legionofhonor.famsf.org
“Jean Conner: Collage”: The San Jose Museum of Art presents the first solo show of 89-year-old San Francisco collage artist Jean Conner, part of the influential Rat Bastard Collective that included Joan Brown, Jay DeFeo, George Herms and Conner’s husband, Bruce Conner.
The artist’s signature collages are mostly made from images cut out of large-format color magazines — like Life and Ladies’ Home Journal — and rearranged images from nature, food or religious symbolism, often focusing on images of women. The final works are often surreal and frequently disquieting.
11 a.m.-6 p.m. Friday-Sunday. May 6-Sept. 25. $8-10. Proof of vaccination and masks required. San Jose Museum of Art, 110 S. Market St., San Jose. 408-271-6840. sjmusart.org