San Francisco Arts Commission

The San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery is the contemporary art exhibitions program of the Commission. The Gallery commissions new works, collaborates with arts and community organizations and supports artist's projects. Admission to the gallery is free. There are three locations for the gallery.

The main gallery, entitled "Capricorn Asunder", was founded in 1970 by visual arts director Elio Benvenuto at 155 Grove Street. It was renamed "S.F. Art Commission Gallery" in 1981. The gallery was relocated to its current location in the War Memorial Veterans Building in 2017.[9][10]

The Commission has approval authority over designs for any proposed civic structures. The Arts Enrichment Ordinance allocates two percent of those construction costs towards the acquisition of graphics, murals, and sculpture for public buildings and spaces.[1][12] The Visual Arts Committee is the governing body responsible for approving new commissions of public art for San Francisco.

San Francisco has been recognized with multiple awards by the Americans for the Arts Public Arts Network, the only national award for public art, which every year recognizes the best public artworks created in the country.

The Board of Supervisors approved an ordinance requiring 30% of public artwork in the city depicting historical figures be women in October 2018, with a work honoring poet and civil rights activist Maya Angelou planned to be erected outside the San Francisco Public Library's main branch by the end of 2020.[13] The Commission began looking for proposals in November 2018 with a budget of $180,000.[14] Out of the hundreds of applications,[14] the Public Art Selection Panel of the Visual Arts Committee selected three—Kenyatta Hinkle, Lava Thomas, and Jules Arthur—as the finalists and called for public comments on their proposals in July 2019.[15] The panel recommended Thomas' Portrait of a Phenomenal Woman with Arthur's The Gift of Literature as the alternative to the Visual Arts Committee, however the committee tabled both proposals in August.[16][17]

In October 2019, Supervisor Catherine Stefani, one of the project sponsors, called for the Commission to restart the selection process with clearer criteria for a monument that aligned with her legislative intent, which preferred a more figurative representation. In describing her justification for this decision, Stefani said, according to the San Francisco Examiner: “As I carried the legislation across the finish line to elevate women in monuments, I wanted to do it in the same way that men have been historically elevated in this city.”[16][14]

Thomas contested Stefani's statement, claiming that a more figurative, traditional design did not align with the design brief applicants were given, in which the word "statue is crossed out and artwork is replaced." She furthered critiqued the assertion for a "conservative, traditional statue in the manner of European figurative traditional monuments that confederate and colonial monuments are based on" in "San Francisco, that’s known for its progressive politics.”[18] She has also criticized the Commission's transparency when they failed to answer her questions and information requests via the city's freedom of information laws.[19]

The Commission began their second search in January 2020 with a different set of criteria and a new budget of $250,000. Thomas declined to participate.[20] In August 2020, the Commission apologized to Thomas in August 2020 for system failures. The commissioners then voted to pause the second call for proposals prior to the announcement of the new finalists to engage "stakeholders in a meaningful way".[20][19] The selection process officially ended on November 2, 2020 when the commissioners awarded Thomas $250,000 for her proposal. Thomas' Portrait of a Phenomenal Woman, a 9-foot bronze book with Angelou's image and quote etched onto it, will be the first monument dedicated to a woman of color on city property and the fourth public monument in the city dedicated to a woman.[21]