It is a onerous time. I’m certain I’m not the one one feeling worry and anxiousness as america appears to spiral. I keep an insistence on looking for solace in artwork, and typically I’ve needed to drag myself by the ear. However the artists I like greatest remind me why I return, repeatedly, in instances of uncertainty.
This spring, museums and galleries all through the San Francisco Bay Space shine a highlight on the area’s historical past of artwork and radicalism, from celebrating seminal native figures like Ruth Asawa and Wayne Thiebaud to modern artists participating with a number of the most urgent questions of our second. I’m impressed by the sight of others creating magnificence from the nightmarish realities of Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids, internment camps, local weather change, and colonialism. It appears like snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. Or, if not victory, then no less than a cause to proceed working towards it.
Sophie Calle
Fraenkel Gallery, 49 Geary Avenue #450, San Francisco, CaliforniaThrough Apr 12
Sophie Calle, “Calle-Joconde (Wrong turn)” (2025), textual content panel in artist’s body, two pigment prints in artists frames, thread, pigment print in cardboard body (picture by Claire Dorn, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery)
Good artists copy, nice artists steal — larger artists fail? In her newest solo present, postmodernist grand dame Sophie Calle reveals deserted tasks, alongside an outline of what might need been, a frank clarification for its failure stamped in crimson under the accompanying wall textual content. My private favourite? A sequence of images of Calle and a look-alike girlfriend posing with equivalent twins Emmanuel and Max throughout time. However then Max died. It’s a beneficiant peek backstage, refreshingly rethinking when a murals is completed.
Susan Weil
COL Gallery, 887 Seashore Avenue, San Francisco, CaliforniaThrough Might 9
Susan Weil “Collage Figure” (1966), acrylic, collage on plexiglass (courtesy the artist and JDJ, New York)
A Black Mountain Faculty graduate alongside Asawa and Elaine de Kooning, Susan Weil has lengthy introduced a feminist bent to summary artwork. Spanning the nonagenarian artist’s profession, this exhibition emphasizes her lifelong fascination with human types and experimentation. These silkscreens, collages, and work are without delay unusual and acquainted, pure and otherworldly. In “Collage Figure” (1966), for example, images of nude our bodies are obscured by writhing layers of acrylics, playfully revising a classical artwork trope.
Matisse’s Jazz Unbound
de Younger Museum, 50 Hagiwara Tea Backyard Drive, San Francisco, CaliforniaThrough July 6
Henri Matisse, “V – Horse, Rider and Clown (Le cheval, L’Ecuyere et le Clown)” (1947), coloration stencil print ({photograph} by Randy Dodson, courtesy the High-quality Arts Museums of San Francisco)
I fell in love with Matisse nearly 30 years in the past, after I first noticed his portray “La Conversation” (1938) on the San Francisco Museum of Fashionable Artwork, and once more on the de Younger Museum’s exhibition Jazz Unbound. That includes the pages of Matisse’s 1947 artist’s guide Jazz framed and hung in a single gallery, the present exemplifies the peak of the artist’s cut-out period. From circus animals to dancing figures, the colour stencil prints are without delay an enthralling and masterful reminder that books could be artwork.
Ancestral Visions: An Set up by Chelsea Ryoko Wong
Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak Avenue, Oakland, CaliforniaThrough February 1, 2026
Set up view of Ancestral Visions: An Set up by Chelsea Ryoko Wong (picture by Kamiko Fujii, courtesy the artist and Jessica Silverman, San Francisco)
Silk meets canvas in Chelsea Ryoko Wong’s work of Chinese language-American ladies within the Bay Space. Displayed alongside conventional Chinese language clothes from the museum’s everlasting assortment, the work envision the lives of the ladies who wore them. “Chasing Dreams” (2024) depicts kids enjoying on a Chinatown road, whereas one other work depicts stated dream made manifest: In it, two ladies watch kids play on Ocean Seashore from their front room window. From Chinatown to the suburbs, these vibrant and intimate tales are related by the thread of vogue.
Wayne Thiebaud: Artwork Comes from Artwork
Legion of Honor, 100 thirty fourth Avenue, San Francisco, CaliforniaMarch 22–August 17
Wayne Thiebaud, “View from Potrero Hill” (1987), clear and opaque watercolor on paper (picture by Michael Trask Pictures, courtesy the Wayne Thiebaud Basis)
Now, this artist steals. This Wayne Thiebaud survey pays tribute to the late, nice painter by inspecting his influences, contexualizing 60 unique works in artwork historical past via works that impressed them. On view, for example, is a straight copy of Georges Seurat’s “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte” (1884–86), and the exhibition outlines the best way Flemish nonetheless lifes impressed his well-known cake work. It’s an apt celebration of Thiebaud’s life, cementing his place within the lineage of portray.
Yuan Goang-Ming: On a regular basis Warfare
Asian Artwork Museum, 200 Larkin Avenue, San Francisco, CaliforniaApril 3–July 7
Yuan Goang-Ming, “Everyday Maneuver” (2018), single-channel video (courtesy the artist)
How do we discover peace throughout instances of unrest? Coming off an acclaimed stint on the 2024 Venice Biennale, Yuan Goang-Ming affords solutions in his first North American solo present. On a regular basis Warfare contains video installations spanning the Taiwanese artist’s profession, from city landscapes to footage of his bed room actually exploding. Taken collectively, it’s a meditation on the tumult of latest life.
Ruth Asawa: Retrospective
San Francisco Museum of Fashionable Artwork, 151 third Avenue, San Francisco, CaliforniaApril 5–September 2
Ruth Asawa and her granddaughter Emma Lanier with Japanese American Internment Memorial (1990-94), commissioned by the Metropolis of San José (picture by Laurence Cuneo, courtesy David Zwirner)
How nicely are you aware Ruth Asawa? You’ve seen the hanging wire sculptures, certain, or perhaps her public artworks dotting town. However the first main museum retrospective of the native legend guarantees essentially the most expansive view but of the artist’s observe. Right here, we’ll see work, drawings, and extra, alongside work by her contemporaries — it’s a present as complete as it’s overdue.
Isaac Julien: I Dream A World
de Younger Museum, 50 Hagiwara Tea Backyard Drive, San Francisco, CaliforniaApril 12–July 13
Isaac Julien, “Pas de Deux No. 2 (Looking for Langston Vintage Series),” (1989/2016), Ilford basic silver gelatin tremendous artwork paper, mounted on aluminum and framed (courtesy the artist and Victoria Miro gallery).
Isaac Julien’s movies carry the load of historical past. This survey of his work on the de Younger packs a heavy punch, whereas giving guests the chance to take a seat with the scope of his work. Spanning Julien’s profession from 1999 to 2022, the ten movies shot internationally from Europe to the Caribbean discover alternative ways colonialism has formed the lives of historic figures, from Frederick Douglass to Alain Locke, in addition to our personal modern world.
Future Flows
Marin Museum of Modern Artwork, 1210 Fifth Avenue, San Rafael, CaliforniaApril 19–July 6
Set up view of Pete Belkin, “Wave Set Tessellation,” (2022), multi-channel video (picture by and courtesy the artist)
In Future Flows, the Marin Museum of Modern Artwork communes with its pure environment in downtown San Rafael, on the fringe of the San Francisco Bay Estuary. Taking local weather change to process, the ten artists on this group present dive into water as a essential component for sustainability. Pete Belkin’s video set up depicts churning waves, whereas Carolina Caycedo’s collage of satellite tv for pc images depicts the progressive drying out of the Yuma River. What can the bay in our personal yard — and artwork made about it — inform us about our planet’s future?
Arleene Correa Valencia: Codice Del Perdedor / The Dropping Man’s Codex
Catharine Clark Gallery, 248 Utah Avenue, San Francisco, CaliforniaMay 31–July 9
Arleene Correa Valencia, “I Do Not Give You Permission To Enter My Home Based On My 4th Amendment Rights Under The United States Constitution,” (2025), acrylic, textiles, thread, and beads on Amate made by Jose Daniel Santos De La Puerta (picture by Adrian Osnaya, courtesy Catharine Clark Gallery)
What can we study from loss? Made on the identical amate paper that Indigenous South Individuals used for instance their tales of migration, the work in Codice Del Perdedor reply to a second of acute hazard for migrant communities in america. One scroll-like portray of a bunch of individuals strolling would possibly invoke a scene of migration or a celebratory parade, a United Farm Staff flag held excessive. Altogether, the exhibition explores humanity when survival is at stake, trying to magnificence as a type of persistence.
