Currency
Currency: The Moving Image
MA Thesis Symposium
MA Collaborative Projects
Spring Show
Commencement
Free and open to the public
The San Francisco Art Institute is proud to present a series of free exhibitions and events that invite the public to engage with emerging talents in the Bay Area art scene, and continue the Institute’s legacy of innovative thinking and experimentation.
Currency
May 16–19, 11am–6pm daily
Opening reception: Friday, May 17, 7–9pm
The Old Mint
88 Fifth Street at Mission, San Francisco
Currency is a showcase of provocative new work from the San Francisco Art Institute’s 2013 Master of Fine Arts graduates. This year’s exhibition location, the Old Mint, offers a unique opportunity for SFAI’s emerging artists to juxtapose contemporary expression with a stunning National Historic Landmark that was central to the country’s economic development. Featuring 90 artists working in painting, photography, printmaking, film, sculpture, site-specific installation, digital media, performance, and across media, Currency invites audiences to discover the next generation of pioneering contemporary artists from this celebrated institution.
A full-color catalogue will be available for sale at the exhibition, and can be found online at www.sfai.edu/currency.
Currency: The Moving Image
May 17, 1–5pm
Contemporary Jewish Museum
736 Mission Street, San Francisco
In conjunction with the Contemporary Jewish Museum, SFAI presents a screening of works by graduating Master of Fine Arts students who excel in the moving image field. Steeped in an avant-garde tradition, SFAI’s MFA program encourages conceptual experimentation and fosters an independent spirit in both thinking and making. Across works in film, video, and performance documentation, the featured artists open our eyes to new modes of understanding from within the temporal-visual plane.
MA Thesis Symposium
May 13–14, 10am–4pm daily
San Francisco Art Institute
800 Chestnut Street, San Francisco
Graduating scholars in SFAI’s Master of Arts programs in Exhibition and Museum Studies, History and Theory of Contemporary Art, Urban Studies, and the Dual Degree MA/MFA will present selections of their completed theses. Engaging a diverse and interdisciplinary range of topics across global contemporary art practices, this year’s cohort has taken up such subjects as religiosity and ritual in cult cinema, the punk aesthetics of radical AIDS activism, curatorial strategies in architecture and design exhibitions, and street-level citizenship in Mexico City.
MA Collaborative Projects
Forming a capstone of the MA program, MA Collaborative Projects are public works focusing on a crucial aspect of contemporary art and its critical contexts. Selections of each project will be on view at Currency:
–Cultures of the Maker: San Francisco Art Institute and Creative Growth is a book project and pairof exhibitionsin partnership with Creative Growth, an organization that offers artist studio and exhibition opportunities for people with disabilities.
–A group of visual scholars researched art exhibition history in order to conceptualize the Museum of Exhibition History (MoX) and its inaugural exhibition, Everything Out There: Bay Area’s First Triennial Now.
Spring show
May 18–25, 9am–4pm daily
San Francisco Art Institute
800 Chestnut Street, San Francisco
The annual, campus-wide Spring Show highlights the work of graduating Bachelor of Fine Arts and Post-Baccalaureate Certificate students across all media.
Commencement
May 18, 10am
Nob Hill Masonic Center
1111 California Street, San Francisco
SFAI will award Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degreesto Academy Award-winning filmmaker (and SFAI alumna) Kathryn Bigelow and world-renowned curator Paul Schimmel during this celebration of the graduating class of 2013.
About SFAI
Founded in 1871 by artists, writers, and community leaders who possessed a cultural vision for the West, the San Francisco Art Institute has long been a locus for artists and thinkers. SFAI fosters creativity and critical thinking in an open, experimental, and interdisciplinary environment. A small school with global impact, SFAI’s notable faculty and alumni include Richard Diebenkorn, Ansel Adams, Annie Leibovitz, Enrique Chagoya, Kathryn Bigelow, Peter Pau, Paul Kos, George Kuchar, Catherine Opie, Lance Acord, Barry McGee, and Kehinde Wiley.
SFAI’s innovative and interdisciplinary curriculum is informed by a strong tradition of rigorous studio work and research in all the visual arts. Balanced with that tradition is an equally strong emphasis in critical thinking, openness to ideas, support for individual perspective, and the teaching of artistic and cultural traditions beyond the Western model. SFAI offers BFA and BA degrees, MFA and MA degrees, a Post-Baccalaureate Certificate, a dual MA/MFA degree, and a range of continuing education and public programs. SFAI enrolls more than 650 students in the degree programs. www.sfai.edu
