"As the protagonist, Scottie, looks out at mid-20th-century San Francisco from an office window, his acquaintance, Gavin Elster, observes, "My how San Francisco's changed. The things that spell San Francisco to me are disappearing fast. I should have liked to have lived here then. Color, excitement, power, freedom." That was then, but we could utter the very same words today, and at every juncture of the city's roller coaster history, for that matter."
"As much as I would like to diss the ubiquitous and ever propagating AI companies and expose their nefarious effects on the Bay Area art world, I just can't simplify the city into "tech friendly and art-repellant," as so many might. At least not yet. This year's San Francisco Art Week attests to the resilience and adaptability of the Bay Area art world."
San Francisco's art ecosystem is experiencing institutional contraction alongside grassroots expansion. Two venerable art schools, the San Francisco Art Institute and the California College of Art, have closed, and several mid-sized galleries, including four housed at Minnesota Street Project, have shut. Simultaneously, alternative spaces, side hustles, home galleries, and nonprofits are proliferating. The art community adapts to economic booms and busts and to new technologies, resisting simple labels such as 'tech friendly' or 'art-repellant.' The local scene demonstrates continual reinvention, with artists and curators creating new platforms and strategies to sustain artistic activity.
Read at Hyperallergic
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