2020: The Year in Review

While the COVID-19 pandemic has limited opportunities for in-person engagement with the arts throughout most of 2020, we spent much of this year exploring new ways to bring art to our audiences. Your support will help us grow in the new year.

While the Covid-19 pandemic has limited opportunities for in-person engagement with the arts throughout most of 2020, we spent much of this year exploring new ways to bring art to our audiences. Your support will help us grow in the new year.

New Leadership

In October 2020, Haight Street Art Center proudly welcomed Kelly Harris as our new Executive Director. Harris brings leadership and experience in communications, fundraising, program development, management and artistic performance.

New Leadership

In October, Haight Street Art Center proudly welcomed Kelly Harris as our new Executive Director. Harris brings leadership and experience in communications, fundraising, program development, management and artistic performance. The Lower Haight resident is passionate about the history of San Francisco from the 1960s & 1970s, and how it has contributed to the way the world embraces art and music as a vehicle to effect social change.

Haight Street Art Center strongly believes that exposure to the arts has the power to unify people of all ages, genders, sexual orientations, races and socio-economic backgrounds. With a renewed commitment to highlighting the voices of diverse and underrepresented artists and communities, we will continue to foster an inclusive, informative and inspirational space.

Haight Street Art Center strongly believes that exposure to the arts has the power to unify people of all ages, genders, sexual orientations, races and socio-economic backgrounds. With a renewed commitment to highlighting the voices of diverse and underrepresented artists and communities, we will continue to foster an inclusive, informative and inspirational space.

Community Building Initiatives

Garden Gallery

In August, we opened the Garden Gallery. This new public outdoor exhibition space is located in the Alchemy Community Garden behind HSAC and will present exhibitions emphasizing the commitment to one of the core tenets of our mission: building community that is inclusive and accessible to all.

Please explore the following exhibitions from our Garden Gallery:

19th Amendment: 2020 Vision

The Silence of the Good

Radical Imagining: Trans Resilience is Powerful

HSAC Artmobile:
Civic Participation

2020 also saw the debut of the HSAC Artmobile, which brought artwork from the 19th Amendment: 2020 Vision and The Silence of the Good exhibitions to demonstrations and gatherings around the Bay Area—displaying and distributing posters, postcards, and bilingual and non-partisan voting information in the streets.

Educational Programs:

Despite limitations imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, we will continue to build on prior successes—expanding existing educational programs and developing new ones for 2021.

Despite limitations imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, we will continue to build on prior successes—expanding past educational programs and developing new ones for 2021.

Access SFUSD Program

In early 2021, we will showcase artwork from our ongoing partnership with the Access SFUSD program, in which young adults with disabilities work in the print studio to create collage and screen-printed artwork.

Public School Programs

Past partnerships with neighboring John Muir Elementary School, Bayside Martin Luther King Jr. Academy, the New School and others produced rewarding experiences for students ages 6-18. At schools and in the print studio, students collaborate with HSAC artists and staff in the creative process to create screen-printed artwork. Since our founding in 2017, we’ve served approximately 1,200 young people through these programs.

Youth Poster Contest

HSAC looks to expand on the successes of the Marin Youth Poster Contest by extending the open call to artists into San Francisco and continuing to display the finalists’ work.

Adult Art Classes

Once permitted to safely do so, we will be restarting screen printing open studio time and other art classes and groups for artists of all ages and skill levels. We also hope to make online tutorials and artist masterclasses available through our website in 2021.

Exhibition Program: Celebrating San Francisco History

Exhibition Program: Celebrating San Francisco History

Stanley Mouse

We kicked off 2020 on a high note with the opening of the historic exhibition Stanley Mouse: A Retrospective, featuring an extensive collection of never-before-seen work from the artist’s early days detailing hot-rods and airbrushing t-shirts in Detroit, his influential posters and contributions to San Francisco’s counterculture and music scene, and more recent fine art paintings. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic has limited in-person attendance over the past year, but we hope to re-open this exhibition for a limited run in early 2021.

Restoration of WPA Mural by Reuben Kadish

With assistance from the Victorian Alliance of San Francisco and National Trust for Historic Preservation, we successfully raised over $40,000 to restore the WPA fresco mural in our building, A Dissertation on Alchemy by Reuben Kadish, which suffered significant vandalism and water damage in the years before HSAC occupied the space. We are excited for guests to experience this important slice of history, once it is restored to its near-original glory.

Jeremy Fish
Haight-Ashbury
Artist-in-Residence

This fall, Jeremy Fish has been artist-in-residence at the historic Doolan-Larson building located at the legendary intersection of Haight and Ashbury. In collaboration with San Francisco Heritage, HSAC will exhibit artwork created during his residency, alongside the stories and interviews that inspired it, and once again collaborate on a series of limited-edition screen prints.

 

Tea Lautrec

Coming this fall, HSAC will shine the light on Levon Mosgofian, the owner of Tea Lautrec Litho, who was instrumental in the San Francisco Poster Renaissance of the 1960s.

Partnerships and Collaborations:
HSAC in the Community

Alongside developing our new Garden Gallery, we have begun to partner with other organizations to display some of our poster shows. Both 19th Amendment: 2020 Vision and The Silence of the Good are on display through January at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre.

Several members of HSAC staff are currently serving on a taskforce that is working to develop the historical Doolan-Larson building into a new museum of counterculture for San Francisco. We hope to have exciting news to communicate on that front in 2021.

We will continue to harness the power of posters and public art to connect and heal as we expand our audiences and strengthen our community.

We will continue to harness the power of posters and public art to connect and heal as we expand our audiences and strengthen our community.