Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco, USA
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San Francisco-San Mateo-Redwood City, CA took top spot in SMU’s DataArts Arts Vibrancy Index among large communities in the U.S. for the second year in a row in 2024. The rankings consider 13 unique measures across hundreds of communities nationwide.
The first place ranking likely won’t surprise area residents who see and feel the region’s arts vibrancy daily. Outsiders may raise an eyebrow. National perspectives of the Bay Area remain jaundiced by right wing media slandering San Francisco, crusading to “prove” the city’s progressive approaches to governance fail.
San Francisco has all the problems America’s other big cities are facing including a rise in homelessness, a shortage of affordable housing, and a cost of living out of whack with wages. San Francisco also has cultural institutions, cultural history, architecture, neighborhoods, non-profits, restaurants, community spirit, and views that would be the envy of any other city in the world.
A city needn’t be perfect to be great, and San Francisco is a great city.
For art lovers, San Francisco will be particularly great–the best in the nation–between January 23rd and January 26th, 2025. Over those four days, three world class special exhibitions at three separate museums align with FOG Design+Art, an international fair launched in 2014 as a means of championing art and design in the Bay Area to the globe.
“What makes FOG unique compared to other art fairs, it’s very local, but also very international at the same time, which is how I like to describe San Francisco as a city as well,” Sydney Blumenkranz, FOG Design+Art’s director, told Forbes.com. “People have a lot of hometown pride here and there’s an incredible arts community made up of artists, and galleries, but also collectors. San Francisco is a melting pot of various different types of people which is why the art scene feels so robust.”
FOG Art+Design fair in San Francisco at Fort Mason Pier 2 and Pier 3.
Nikki Ritcher
Galleries from Paris, London, Barcelona, Hong Kong, Mexico City, New York, and Los Angeles will be represented at FOG along with those from San Francisco and Northern California. This year’s fair also sees the return of FOG FOCUS, a dedicated pavilion showcasing art by young and underrepresented artists, offering entry at a lower price point.
More reasonably priced still, FOG MRKT.
“FOG MRKT is six local purveyors that are that are fan favorites in San Francisco,” Blumenkranz explained. “They’re going to have a little pop-up stand at the front of the fair selling sort of home goods and more craftsmen-like items at a more affordable price point.”
Bravo.
Art fairs trend toward the exclusive and pretentious. With single day admission tickets to FOG purchased in advance costing $35 plus fees, it’s not cheap. Visitors will find value, however.
“People do think of art fairs as a very elevated experience where I can’t possibly afford anything, and it’s all these art collectors, and that’s not necessarily the case. I look at an art fair as 60 small exhibitions,” Blumenkranz said. “(FOG) has 59 exhibitors and they all bring work, curate their own booths, and it’s an amazing opportunity to just see art. Sure, if you’re in the market to buy something, great, and if not, that’s okay too.”
The fair also continues its FOG Talks programming series exploring ideas and issues relevant to the fields of art, design, and technology. General admission tickets include access to FOG Talks. Make it a point to be there on Saturday at 5:00 PM when contemporary art superstar Carrie Mae Weems will be in conversation with San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) director Christopher Bedford.
Fifty-nine galleries plus Carrie Mae Weems in person. That makes $35 feel like a deal.
FOG Art+Design will be open to the public from 11:00 AM to 7:00 PM Thursday through Saturday and 11:00 AM to 5:00 PM on Sunday at Fort Mason Pier 2 and Pier 3.
“San Francisco has been through a lot in the past five or six years coming out of COVID. People see FOG as a shining beacon of when the international art world shines a light on San Francisco and descends on the city for really the only time all year,” Blumenkranz said. “FOG showcases San Francisco on the international stage as a hub of culture and interconnectivity, and San Francisco really is special in that way, and I think it’s lost a bit of its shine recently.”
Planning The Perfect San Francisco Arts Weekend
Amy Sherald portrait of Breonna Taylor at Speed Art Museum in Louisville.
Chadd Scott
Visitors to San Francisco arriving for FOG on Thursday, and locals, can jumpstart their arts binge weekend taking advantage of late-night hours on Thursdays at the Asian Art Museum, until 8:00 PM, and SFMOMA, until 9:00 PM. Afterwards, enjoy the free Yerba Buena Gardens, across the street from SFMOMA and a mile from the Asian Art Museum, open daily until 10:00 PM.
“There is so much going on here. It starts to almost feel like New York in that way,” Blumenkranz said. “We have a walking city center, easy to get around, it’s really one of the more creative, energetic places to be right now.”
Friday, make a day of by visiting the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco’s two locations, the de Young in Golden Gate Park and the Legion of Honor in the nearby Lands End–Golden Gate Park National Recreation Area. Art with scenery. No where in the world does it better than San Francisco.
Both museums are currently hosting exhibitions worth bragging about. At the Legion of Honor, find Mary Cassatt through January 26. You’re just in time. At the de Young, Tamara de Lempicka through February 9. Both shows have been previously reviewed by Forbes.com.
The museums’ special presentations and permanent collections, the grounds surrounding them, and the famed Haight-Ashbury neighborhood’s quirky shops, restaurants, and music history adjacent to the east entrance of Golden Gate Park make for a memorable day.
Saturday is all about FOG and the Weems talk. Take advantage of the fair’s location beside the Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture, which hosts exhibitions and public art of its own, and the Great Meadow Park at Fort Mason. All right on the Bay. Perfect views of the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz.
Wrap up the day at iconic Buena Vista Cafe, a mile from the piers hosting FOG. Take the chill off with an Irish coffee and clam chowder served in a sourdough bread bowl. The kitchen closes at 9:30 on Saturday nights.
Use Sunday for returning to any favorites and complete the must-see checklist that includes Amy Sherald’s solo show at SFMOMA. Her portraits of both Breonna Taylor and Michelle Obama, arguably the two most famous and significant paintings from the 21st century, are on hand.
A weekend chasing the arts across San Francisco blows up myths of a city barely hanging on the way some in the media would like you to believe. San Francisco is instead revealed as thriving in many aspects, arts and culture foremost among them.
“It’s still the beautiful, culturally, arts-oriented city that it always has been,” Blumenkranz said. “If anything, now is the time to celebrate that more than ever, especially with the recent election of a new mayor, Daniel Lurie, which I think everyone is super excited and hopeful for, and I think FOG really adds to the narrative that San Francisco is a shining beacon of light, of cultural cities in the United States, and we need to keep it that way.”
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