San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI)
800 Chestnut Street
San Francisco, CA 94133
www.sfai.edu
www.sfai.edu/events
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SFAI’s Summer Institute offers Bay Area audiences engaging and thought-provoking public programs that stem from and support SFAI’s summer academic programming, including the Low-Residency MFA, Low-Residency MA, and Undergraduate Residency programs. This summer’s events explore the resonance of art-historical movements in contemporary society; beer gardens and spectator culture; and the practice of art criticism.
Events are free and open to the public, but attendees should register online in advance at www.sfai.edu/events.
Diego Rivera and the Mexican Mural Movement: A Contemporary Perspective on Art and Activism
Wednesday, July 11, 7:30–9:30pm and Thursday, July 12, 6–8pm
This two-day symposium, organized by SFAI (home to a renowned Diego Rivera mural) and the Consulate General of Mexico in San Francisco, will consider the legacy of the Mexican mural movement in contemporary art and activism, featuring artists, writers, and scholars from Mexico and the United States, including keynote speaker Sandra de la Loza. There is also a private tour on July 14 of Diego Rivera’s murals in the Bay Area (advance ticket purchase required for tour).
BIER SOMMER: The View Point Movie Theater and Beer Garden
Friday, July 27 and Saturday, July 28, 3–9pm
BIER SOMMER, organized by conceptual artist Hans Winkler, is an artistic exploration of the contemporary culture of beer gardens in the broader context of consumer and spectator culture. The event features two days of film screenings, performances, and readings from noted local and international artists; beer coasters designed by artists including Paul Kos, Julio Cesar Morales, and Nao Bustamante; the Beer Garden Newspaper, a tabloid-size periodical featuring texts and images about United States and German beer gardens; and beer from Traunstein, one of the oldest breweries in Germany.
26th Annual Art Criticism Conference
SFAI’s Art Criticism Conference introduces participants to the historical and contemporary practice of writing about art in its many poetic and professional functions. Coordinated by Mark Van Proyen, art critic and Associate Professor in SFAI’s Painting Department, the conference includes the following public events:
Staged Reading: Oscar Wilde’s The Critic As Artist
Tuesday, August 14, 7:30pm
Full of witty repartee, Oscar Wilde’s 1890 play The Critic As Artist is a provocative philosophical dialogue that takes the role of criticism as its subject. Over 100 years after its initial publication, the issues the play raises still resonate, and in many ways it anticipates the philosophical orientations of postmodern critics.
Keynote Speaker: Lane Relyea
Thursday, August 16, 7:30pm
Lane Relyea is Associate Professor of Art Theory & Practice at Northwestern University, and taught for a decade at the California Institute of the Arts. His book D.I.Y. Culture Industry: Signifying Practices, Social Networks and Other Instrumentalizations of Everyday Art is forthcoming from MIT Press.
Graduate Lecture Series
The summer Graduate Lecture Series allows Low-Residency MFA and Low-Residency MA students—as well as the wider Bay Area public—to engage with emerging and established artists, curators, and scholars working in both local and global art communities.
Fridays at 6:30pm
June 22 / Susan Silton
Susan Silton works across photography/video, installation, performance, text, audio, lithography, and internet technologies, using strategies of humor, discomfort, and subterfuge.
June 29 / Rhea Anastas
Rhea Anastas is an art historian and curator, and currently Interim Director of the MA Art and Curatorial Practices in the Public Sphere program at Roski School of Fine Arts, USC.
July 6 / Pamela Z
Pamela Z is a composer/performer and media artist who makes solo works combining vocal techniques with electronic processing, samples, gesture activated MIDI controllers, and video.
July 20 / Hans Winkler
Hans Winkler is a conceptual artist who has been realizing projects in public space since 1984, intervening into the reality of daily life and the perception of popular symbols.
July 27 / Kota Ezawa
Kota Ezawa’s projects take the form of digital animations, slide projections, lightboxes, paper cutouts, intaglio etchings, ink drawings, and wood sculptures, often drawing on images from art history and popular culture.
About the San Francisco Art Institute
Founded in 1871, the San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI), a nonprofit art college, is one of the nation’s oldest and most prestigious schools of higher education in contemporary art. A small school with global impact—notable faculty and alumni include Richard Diebenkorn, Ansel Adams, Annie Leibovitz, Enrique Chagoya, Kathryn Bigelow, Peter Pau, Ruby Yang, Paul Kos, George Kuchar, Lance Acord, and Kehinde Wiley—SFAI enrolls approximately 650 students in undergraduate and graduate programs, and offers a wide range of continuing education courses and public programs. For more information about SFAI, please visit www.sfai.edu.
