Inherent contradictions define state of San Francisco art

San Francisco was named in the top three U.S. cities for art in recent years. So why doesn’t The City feel like one?

Not only is San Francisco perceived as lesser than its peers, but it’s a place where it’s increasingly difficult for artists to make a living. Yet The City’s art scene, in many ways, is thriving.

Economist Clare McAndrew ranked San Francisco as the No. 3 “art city” in the United States in a 2022 UBS report, behind New York and Los Angeles. At the time of the report, San Francisco had 4% of U.S. art institutions, 5% of the nation’s art galleries and 3% of its arts nonprofits. New York and Los Angeles had 47% of the nation’s galleries and 21% of its arts nonprofits between them.

Yet international news outlets would have you believe The City’s art market is dead . Local artists simultaneously feel a strong sense of community and struggle to make a living here. San Francisco boasts a rich history of art and counterculture — but does that spirit actually persist? Or are things better than they seem for local artists?

All of this contributes to the sense that San Francisco is a “second-tier art city,” as one artist friend of mine recently called it. But it seems to me that San Francisco’s second-tier — or, in the case of the 2022 study, third-tier — status is, and always has been, exactly what allows for first-rate art to get made here.

“The Bay Area has always been on the cutting edge of political, social, technological, and cultural movements,” said Timothy Anglin Burgard, senior curator at the de Young and Legion of Honor museums. “New York’s claim to being the center of the art world represents an obsolete paradigm — and, one could argue, is actually what makes it the most provincial.”

San Francisco might suffer from the lack of a major art market to support its community, but that isn’t necessarily a local issue. The art market has grown increasingly globalized in the last 20 years amid the booming rise of international art fairs . Does it matter where an artist lives given the rapid decentralization of the market?

“Just like materiality, positionality makes meaning,” said Key Jo Lee, chief curator at Museum of the African Diaspora.

“So many fairs ultimately feel very similar,” said Shana Lopes, assistant curator of photography at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. “It feels like they have exploded, and there’s a fair every other week. I do like, with FOG Fair , however, that there were local commissions and a space for emerging artists, which I haven’t seen with a lot of fairs.”

That’s not the only way San Francisco institutions are supporting their local artists.

SFMOMA’s Society for the Encouragement of Contemporary Art , which was established in 1961, has held a biennial award exhibition at the museum since 1967. Each edition showcases a handful of local artists.

The MOAD Emerging Artist Program began in 2015, granting four artists per year $10,000 honoraria, mentoring and often their first solo exhibitions at the museum level.

“2023 was a historic year of applications for EAP,” Lee said, resulting in the museum upping its number of recipients from four to five this year.

The de Young Open , a triennial open-call exhibition at the de Young which launched in 2020, received 7,766 submissions for its second edition last year — roughly 1,000 more than the first year — and showcased 883 of those artists.

The sheer volume of community engagement with these programs is indicative of a thriving art scene — or, at least, one that is eager for opportunity.

“We’re seeing a real desire from artists not only to be shown but to be stewarded, and to have the resources and conversations around how to make their mark in the bay and beyond,” Lee said.

She also said the museum is encouraging EAP artists “to think of themselves as Bay Area artists, but also to think of the Bay and themselves as global.”

There’s a triangular tension between an external perception that The City’s art scene is suffering, the verifiable fact that it is going strong despite the hiccups and hurdles of the last few years, and the reality of the struggles artists do face living and working in one of the world’s most expensive cities.

“There’s an opportunity to make San Francisco super weird again” — and The City is close to getting it right, Lee said.

“Everyone wants to have artists activating empty lots and storefronts , but are you actually giving it to them after that?” she said. “How are we actually anchoring them in that space?”

“Many people can’t afford to go to a museum,” Burgard pointed out — and that includes artists with day jobs. It’s also why the “ de Young Museum offers free admission to residents of the nine Bay Area counties on Saturdays,” he said.

SFMOMA offers a similar program for locals on the first Thursday of every month , and MOAD offers free admission on the second Saturday of each month .

“I think there’s the notion that artists are supposed to be suffering and be poor as a means of promoting creativity,” Lee said.

“There is a need for The City to make permanent housing more affordable,” Lopes said. “You can’t be under that much stress and be creative.”

Artists Hub on Market and Mercy Housing of California recently filed plans with The City for an affordable-housing development for artists on Market Street, supported by a $100 million gift from anonymous donors.

All of this left me wondering: What, exactly, is the state of the arts in San Francisco right now?

Can The City overcome its perceived second-tier status? Or is the scene here special in spite of the adversities that pose a challenge to it?

We’re going to spend the next few months in this space talking to artists, gallerists and art collectors, trying to find out the answers, because one thing is clear: “There have been no great cities across civilization without great art,” Burgard said.