“For an artist living and working in Northern California, showing work at San Francisco’s esteemed de Young Museum is an achievement akin to qualifying for the Olympics or climbing Mount Everest.”
—DAN TAYLOR, THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
I’m thrilled to be part of “The de Young Open”, a juried salon-style exhibition featuring the work of San Francisco Bay Area artists at the astounding de Young Museum.
The exhibit will celebrate the museum’s 125th anniversary and will showcase the work of Bay Area artists. It will be the opening exhibit for the museum’s COVID reopening, along with “Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving” and several other exhibits.
The open call entries were curated by a jury led by Timothy Anglin Burgard, de Young’s Distinguished Senior Curator and Ednah Root, curator in charge of American art, which included artist judges Hung Liu, Mildred Howard and Enrique Chagoya. From over 11,500 submissions, the team ultimately selected works created by 763 artists.
To accommodate the large number of works, the museum plans to hang the show in a salon or academy style, where numerous pieces are grouped together in the nine galleries to best use wall space. The grouped works will then be separated into different thematic sections. The first gallery will feature works inspired by recent events surrounding Black Lives Matter; the second will explore art that addresses the impact of the coronavirus. Other delineating themes include nature, abstraction, figures and portraits, as well as works inspired by surrealism.
The exhibition’s overall theme, “On the Edge,” comes from a phrase in a traditional Ohlone song: “I am dancing. On the edge of the world I am dancing.” The theme had already been chosen before the pandemic and the year’s social activism, but evolved to focus around the Bay Area’s geographic location on the Pacific Rim and the region’s historical reputation for cutting-edge creativity.
The de Young Open
The de Young Museum \ Golden Gate Park \ 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, San Francisco, CA 94118
Saturday, October 10, 2020, through Sunday, January 3, 2021
The museum offers free general admission every Saturday to all Bay Area residents and encourage all to book in advance given limited capacity due to COVID-19 restrictions.
The de Young transporting my painting into the museum
Bogatsky Poem #06 and me
“Bogatsky Poem No.6”
(Height x Length x Depth): 66 x 44 x 2 inches
You can see the series here.