The Art of a City: New Exhibition at SFO Explores Forty Years of the San Francisco Arts Festival

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The Art of a City:
New Exhibition at SFO Explores Forty Years of the San Francisco Arts Festival
 

SAN FRANCISCO -- Now on view at San Francisco International Airport, The Art of a City: The History of the San Francisco Arts Festival 1946-1986 features more than 70 selections acquired by San Francisco's Civic Art Collection during four decades of the City's annual Arts Festivals.  Comprised of a variety of media including paintings, sculpture, works on paper, jewelry, and ceramics, the exhibition explores the overlapping history of the festival program and the regional artistic identities - such as Bay Area Figurative painting, Funk and Studio Craft - that it encouraged.

A collaborative effort between the San Francisco Arts Commission and a group of artists frustrated by the scarcity of local museums and galleries, the first municipally sponsored San Francisco Arts Festival was held in the City’s Civic Center in 1946.  As the festival grew in popularity over the years, it became a significant forum for the exchange of visual ideas and material technique. 

Throughout the festival’s forty-year span, the San Francisco Arts Commission used budgeted monies from the City’s general fund to purchase jury-selected work by contributing local artists.  As a result, the Civic Art Collection contains a number of early works by influential artists. Objects from the collection displayed in The Art of a City include works by Robert Arneson, Bruce Beasley, Viola Frey, Peter Macchiarini, Antonio Prieto and Merry Renk.

Following the final Festival in 1986, a number of works in the Civic Art Collection were incorporated into the Arts Commission’s interdepartmental loan program for display in City offices.  For many of the artworks included in The Art of a City, this is the first time they have been publicly exhibited in over twenty years.

The Art of a City: The History of the San Francisco Arts Festival 1946-1986 is located pre-security in the International Terminal Main Hall, and is on view twenty-four hours a day through April 5, 2009. There is no charge to view the exhibition.

Images from the exhibition are available at http://www.flysfo.com/web/page/about/news/pressres/exh-artsfestival.html.

San Francisco Airport Museums

The San Francisco Airport Museums program was established by the Airport Commission in 1980 for the purposes of humanizing the Airport environment, providing visibility for the unique cultural life of San Francisco, and providing educational services for the traveling public. The Museum was granted initial accreditation from the American Association of Museums in 1999, reaccredited in 2005, and has the distinction of being the only accredited museum in an airport. Today, the San Francisco Airport Museums features approximately twenty galleries throughout the Airport terminals displaying a rotating schedule of art, history, science, and cultural exhibitions, as well as the San Francisco Airport Commission Aviation Library and Louis A. Turpen Aviation Museum, a permanent collection dedicated to the history of commercial aviation.

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