At Fort Mason in SF: $300M worth of art from more 500 artists represented by 80 galleries.  Photo: DeWitt Cheng

In the fall of 1947 a New York art instructor teaching at the California School of Fine Arts (now San Francisco Art Institute), wrote to an artist friend: “The city is unspeakably beautiful & the weather is perfect …There is no doubt that by its visual attributes alone this city has earned the right to be the art center of the world, and that we must do something to bring this about.”

LA Gallerist Louis Stern with Karl Benjamin’s "#7" from 1966.  (DC)

Professor Mark Rothko certainly understood San Francisco’s appeal; but his love of our landscape didn’t stop him from returning to New York after his stint at SFIA.  Fact is, San Francisco, for all its great vistas and year-around mild climate, has never been a great art market and probably never will be due to its small population.

Nevertheless, the pool of Bay Area art talent has always been deep.  One longstanding explanation for the discrepancy between art and commerce in this region is that we are too nature-obsessed; or perhaps the views from our couches (or beaches) are too good to need accessorizing with art.

Last week, however, locals got a jolt of art-world adrenaline when the SF Fine Art Fair (May 20-23) came to town, filling up the 50,000 square feet of the Festival Pavilion on the bay at Fort Mason. It’s the same venue that housed the San Francisco International Art Expo from 1998 through 2006 before running into financial problems; so attendees were both thrilled by the new fair (a production of Hamptons Expo Group which runs fairs in Bridgehampton, NY, in July, and in Aspen, CO, in August), and cautiously optimistic, seeking good omens in bad times.

Chatting up a prospective buyer.  Photo: David M. Roth

Good omens came in the form of $300 million worth of works by more than 500 artists from some 80 galleries, hailing from New York, Los Angeles, Denver, Santa Fe, Denver, Chicago, Sacramento, Charlotte, Seoul, London, Berlin and Venice.  Big-name artists included: Diane Arbus, Charles Arnoldi, Romare Bearden, Ross Bleckner, Charles Burchfield, Roger Brown, Jess Collins, Bruce Conner, Robert Cottingham, Richard Diebenkorn, Eric Fischl, Janet Fish, Sam Francis, Robert Frank, Helen Frankenthaler, Ellsworth Kelly, Jacob Lawrence, Jack Levine, Sol Lewitt, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Mapplethorpe, Shirin Neshat, David Park, Martin Puryear, Ed Ruscha, Laurie Simmons, Kiki Smiith, Masami Teraoka, Wayne Thiebaud and Peter Voulkos.  Their works, along with pieces from 475 other artists were spaciously arranged and well-lighted under the Pavilion’s lofty roof in near-perfect art-viewing conditions.

Opening VIP gala drew more than 3,000 people. (DR)

Even the best flaneurs, or art strollers, need a break, however, and the fair offered a variety of programs and events to those in need of a chair.  Pioneer gallerist Ruth Braunstein, whose Braunstein/Quay Gallery celebrates 50 years representing such artists as Peter Voulkos, John Altoon, Robert Brady, Richard Shaw, Ursula Schneider, Mary Snowden and Michael Stevens, was honored at a special ceremony with a Lifetime Achievement Award; her charity project ArtCare, a collaboration between the San Francisco Arts Commission, the San Francisco Art Dealers Association, will fund the badly needed maintenance of the city’s public sculpture.

Gallerist from Sundaram Tagore (NYC/LA) speaking about artist Kim Joon. (DR)

Braunstein, when handed the microphone at the event, didn’t cast a reflective look on her half century in the art business; instead, she appealed for donations to ArtCare and received, on the spot, a $10,000 check from art patron and philanthropist Roselyne “Cissy” Swig.

The West Coast Art Collector’s Conference, consisting of 14 panel discussions emceed by Squarecylinder’s David M. Roth, offered tips on collecting sculpture, prints and photographs; framing; appraisals; how to buy art as an investment; the modernist art of India; how galleries pick their artists; the media’s impact on the marketplace and other topics.

Attendance, which was plagued by a malfunctioning sound system, ranged from full-house (media and the marketplace; how galleries pick artists) to moderate (Indian Modernism ) to practically nil (framing) — a shame since Paul Porambo of SF-based Fine Art Services, brought more imagination to the subject than one would have thought possible.  

Special exhibits included a huge digital, interactive robotic sculpture, “Inflatable Architectural Growth,” by Chico MacMurtrie, in conjunction with San Jose’s Zero1 Biennial in September, and solo exhibition booths for five artists: John Altoon (Braunstein Quay Gallery, SF), Joachim Hiller (Walter Bischoff Galerie, Berlin), Klari Reis (Cynthia Corbett Gallery, London), Jenn Shifflet (Chandra Cerrito Contemporary, Oakland), and Jeff Wallin (Patrajdas Contemporary, Chicago).

Ruth Braunstein and Cissy Swig.  (DR)

The Bay Area art audience responded affirmatively, with 15,000 visitors participating in the four-day event. The Thursday night kickoff, a benefit for the San Francisco Art Institute (Rothko’s old employer, which was exhibiting work by its new MFA grads next door) turned out to be a tribal gathering of Bay Area art-worlders—with five times as many celebrants as the fair producers had expected.

The following morning, Hamptons Expo Group CEO and Founder Rick Friedman (himself a major collector of Abstract Expressionist art) enthused: “There’s a tremendous amount of interest in the show; a turnout of 3,000 VIPs that came in for the opening night—that’s extraordinary, in any fair in America…there are a lot of red dots, a lot of sales, some in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.  This will blossom; it will be even better next year.” He praised the high quality of the work: “There really aren’t any weak spots on the floor. This is the only show I’ve seen in a long time that’s strong, front, middle and back.”

Director of Sales Max Fishko was similarly optimistic on Sunday afternoon as closing time approached: “We’re very interested in seeing the Bay Area become not only a national destination, but an international destination for the kind of art tourism you see centered around really successful art fairs — Art Chicago, Art Basel Miami Beach, the Armory Fair in New York.”

Just as important as the fairs’ “multiplying effect” in galvanizing new collectors and stimulating the market, however, are its psychological benefits to local artists, galleries, and museums: “The energy that an event like this can bring to an art market— it’s kind of a demonstration or show of force: ‘This is alive and well and you need to come here and pay attention to it.’  We all know how the wheels [of commerce] turn, but this is really a socially benevolent kind of activity.”

Whether the fair grows and thrives will depend on sales and whatever ancillary benefits accrue between now and next year.  So far, the views from most of the participating galleries have been favorable, notwithstanding various glitches including a malfunction sound system, limited food options and catalogue errors.

Here, below, is a sampling of reactions from gallerists:

Ruth Braunstein (Braunstein/Quay Gallery, San Francisco):“I felt the fair had a lot of energy, whether you like the work or not. The work was not that adventurous—not anything you can’t see somewhere else. I don’t think that dealers made a lot of money, but there were huge crowds. A lot of the local people that you never see came, and attendance stayed pretty constant for the whole three and a half days. Fairs are very expensive, and people are tired of fairs. I don’t think it should be done every year—maybe every other year [alternating with Los Angeles].”

Katrina Traywick (Traywick Contemporary, Berkeley): “Art fairs are now an established way of doing business, especially for dealers that are not in larger art markets like New York or Los Angeles… I am very pleased with the energy, the crowds and the sales from SFFAF 2010.  It will take some time to establish it as a solid, regional fair but this can be done. And it is a terrific antidote to the overcrowded and sometimes overblown mega-fairs in Miami and New York. It will take additional advertising and outreach both in the Bay Area as well as in other major West Coast cities:  Los Angeles, Portland, Seattle etc.”

Peter Fetterman (Peter Fetterman Gallery, Santa Monica): “San Francisco is one of the great cities in the world, so in terms of an art fair destination it has so much going for it.  Fort Mason, with its views, natural light and proximity to Greens Take Out makes it very user-friendly for us art fair warriors.  There was good, positive energy all round and a genuine will to see it succeed.  However, it’s really imperative that the opening night have a real sense of occasion. Here the organizers perhaps have to do some real subtle social networking and align themselves with a group that can deliver a well-heeled, sophisticated and seriously interested audience. This is hard to do from the East Coast, but it is the key to the show’s survival and growth. We look forward to hearing about new, positive developments so we can clear our schedule and continue to believe, like Annie, that "the sun will come up tomorrow."

Catharine Clark (Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco): “There were 15,000 people in attendance and that in and of itself was impressive and helped to keep energy and spirits high (for gallerists, collectors and patrons). The gallery sold work and met some people that we did not know going into the fair—the main reason to participate in any fair. The layout of the fair was clean and contemporary looking (no carpets—yes!); the collaboration with ZER01 was innovative and impressive. The outreach to the public was beyond expectation. The sound [and signage need to] … be improved upon next year…. I’d like to see more contemporary galleries participating from the far reaches of the globe.” CCG will attend next year and recommends that others do so, too. On the poor media coverage: “I find it scandalous that the Chronicle did not feel obligated to cover an event that 15,000 San Franciscans thought was important enough to show up to.”

George Krevsky (George Krevsky Gallery, San Francisco) concurs on the media being missing in action: “There was absolutely NO coverage in the SF Chronicle or West Coast NY Times, or TV coverage. Press in general was terrible.” He points out the absence of many blue-chip galleries: “This [fair] has some promise but I was disappointed with the number of qualified collectors who attended.” 

Kimberly Johansson (Johansson Projects, Oakland): “My experience at the fair was unexpectedly good. Most of the folks I placed work with were new. They had heard of the gallery but had never made the trip over the bridge to see it in person. I think it could be even better next year if we could attract some strong galleries from afar and market to collectors out of the region and perhaps also plan more events for travelers.”

Beth Jones (JAYJAY, Sacramento): “It was thrilling to be part of the revival of the art fair in San Francisco.  The venue couldn’t be better and the turnout could not have been stronger.  Sales did not meet our expectations. But on the plus side, the relationships we built with new collectors – those I believe will ultimately bear fruit. Is there room for improvement?  Yes, there is.  The panel discussions need to be focused on contemporary issues, not generic topics, and the food and concessions need to be more upscale; collectors need to be pampered and rewarded for showing up.  Small glitches aside, this was a high-caliber event.

Louis Stern (Louis Stern Fine Arts, West Hollywood) “Sales and contacts are our major register of how well any art fair has functioned, and with regard to sales we were pleased, or at least cautiously optimistic, with the results.  In terms of contacts and conversations, I was consistently impressed with the level of interest and knowledge demonstrated by the attendees.  It has been my experience that the real test of the viability of the contacts made during any fair is determined in the following six months.  How many of these folks will actually visit our website to check out our inventory or swing by the gallery when they journey to LA?  How many of these folks will actually contact the gallery and become our clients in the months to come?  That’s the real question.”

Michael Rosenthal (Michael Rosenthal Gallery, San Francisco): “The San Francisco Fine Art Fair was a welcome jolt to the San Francisco art world in scope, ambition and the range of things it gives you to think about.  However, it is disappointing that out of 48 San Francisco art galleries, only 18 actually participated.”

William Havu (William Havu Gallery, Denver) “I was delighted with the venue at Fort Mason.  What a view!  I was also delighted with the overall quality of the exhibitors and what they brought.The fair organizers, Hamptons Expo Group did a great job in turning out the audience and promoting the event and, though I did not get an opportunity to attend any of the discussions, thought that having them added an extra dimension. We did manage to sell seven pieces, all paintings and all relatively small which didn’t pay the overhead, but it was better than we had done two years ago at RedDot during Art Basel/Miami. That fair was held at an unfortunate time economically and even though I don’t think things are a great deal better, there has been improvement.  I would certainly do this fair again next year.  Everyone was having fun looking and appreciating the art if not actually buying.  It gave me hope and made me smile.”

Susan O’Malley (Curator and Print Center Director Institute of Contemporary Art, San Jose) “As a non-profit art space we were satisfied with the exposure and level of awareness we raised at the Fair. Ultimately, we are happy and encouraged that San Francisco hosted a modern/contemporary fair which we hope will become a catalyst for generating an important discussion about the Bay Area art ecosystem going forward. We’re excited about the possibilities and understand that it takes a village.”

Whether gallerists did good business or missed their goals, one thing appears clear: If the results of our informal and (and admittedly nonscientific) opinion poll continue to hold, many dealers will be back next year, expecting a more polished second year and better times as the recession (hopefully) fades.  They will be evaluating the role of art fairs and the role of San Francisco in the international market, holding in the balance Rothko’s dream of a Bay Area art utopia.  

Hamptons’ Max Fishko: “It’s a tough economy. It’s a rough moment to be taking risks. “We took a risk to come out here to do it and we were lucky enough to find people willing to take the risks with us.”

–DEWITT CHENG

The San Francisco Fine Art Fair ran May 20-23, 2010 at Fort Mason.

Lawrence Argent’s Red Rabbit: a virtual view of the construction site

When Sacramento’s new International Airport terminal opens in late 2011, visitors will be greeted by a new urban mascot: a 56-foot red rabbit that appears to be diving from the ceiling into a suitcase. It’s the creation of sculptor Lawrence Argent, best known most recently for a giant blue bear that, on hind legs, peers into the windows of the Denver Convention Center. Argent’s is one of 13 new pieces of public art that will soon grace an expanded Sacramento International airport and transform how many visitors see the city for the first time. 

Sacramento International Airport Terminal B exterior view.  Architect:Corgan Assoc., Dallas

Donald Lipski, virtual installation view of “Acorn Steam”

Sacramento already has a museum-quality collection of public art scattered within a stone’s throw of the State Capitol. It includes pieces by Alice Aycock, Stephen Kaltenbach, Jennifer Bartlett, William Wiley, Jenny Holzer, Deborah Oropallo, Deborah Butterfield, William Allan, Robert Brady, Nathan Oliveira, Lita Albuquerque and Mark di Suvero to name but a few. In all, there are more than 650 pieces of public art in its domain. Problem is, unless you work for the state or have reason to do business with the government in-person, it’s unlikely that you will ever see many of these works – although you could have seen quite a few of them had you taken one of the tours offered last year by SMAC.

Joan Moment, “A Fragment of the Universe", 2009, 24 x 36 inches, acrylic on paper; virtual view of the piece as a 12 x 18-foot glass teserae floor

 

The remake of Terminal B addresses the visibility issue by masterfully integrating art and architecture. It was not an easy feat. With its curved roof, floor-to-ceiling windows and sweeping, light-suffused vistas, the building doesn’t exactly offer a surfeit of hospitable places for displaying painting, sculpture, installation or video. Nevertheless, by working creatively with SMAC and with the architect, the artists, at least on paper, figured out how to install engaging works that complement the airport’s essential functions: parking, transportation, security, ticketing, baggage handling. 

 

A preview of what it will all look like is on view at the Center for Contemporary Art, Sacramento through May 16.  The show (In Public: Designing Art for the Sacramento International Airport) consists of architectural drawings, models, video presentations and original paintings. The paintings, by Suzanne Adan and Joan Moment, will be translated to glass teserae mosaics by Franz Mayer of Munich, widely regarded as the world’s leading fabricator of glass for contemporary art installations.  Overall, the exhibition achieves its goal of demonstrating the process by which works of public art come into being; that is, the revisions that an artist must make to satisfy structural, safety, security, aesthetic and budgetary requirements. 

 

What a show like this can’t possibly communicate is the complexity of the overall process.  To get an idea of what’s involved, I spoke to Shelly Willis, program manager of SMAC’s Art in Public Places Program. What follows is a condensed version of our conversation.

 

Sculptor Lawrence Argent and Shelly Willis, program director, Sacramento’s Art in Public Places program  Photo: Lawrence Campling

David M. Roth: Bringing the outside world into the interior of the airport seems to be the connecting thread for most of the pieces in this project. Why was that important?

 

Shelly Willis: "Bringing the outside in" is one of the underlying building design concepts. As the artists began developing their designs, I suggested they consider this as a foundation for their work. Thus far, all but one of the artists uses this idea in their work.  

 

Sacramento actually has quite a bit of great public art, a lot of it by well-known artists, both local and national. What does the art in this project bring to Sacramento that’s new and exciting?

 

All of the work in the project looks like art. I know this may sound strange, but sometimes when artists are required to create functional works of art (benches, tree grates, fences), it can disappear into the building. This work will not. The "outside-in" idea prevents that from happening. It serves as a theme that holds the work together as if it was curated by one person.

 

Most people have no idea how complicated it is to integrate art into a construction project this size.  Give us a brief idea of what it takes to bring a project like this from conception to completion. 

 

The process began two years ago with a plan that had three phases.  The first was a limited competition for works that are part of the building’s structure. These have to be planned early on because the art is literally part of the structure. The artist and the architect have to work cooperatively.

 

 Terminal B, Interior View. Architect: Corgan Assoc., Dallas

The remaining 10 artworks were selected in a second phase that began with a nationwide call for qualified artists. 503 artists responded.   I convened seven panels of community members. Depending on the project, the panels met three to six times to select the artists and to approve designs. Each panel, after reviewing the nominees, narrows its selection down to a group of finalists. From there, a winner is selected who then submits a proposal. The proposal is generally revised quite a few times before it is accepted by the panel. After that, it must be approved by the Arts Commission and by the Board of Supervisors. There’s a third phase that will involve three additional artworks, two in the international terminal and one on the South Lawn. The artists have yet to be selected.

 

How much of what you described is your direct responsibility?

 

I direct the program which means I manage the process from start to finish.

 

What distinct challenges did this project present for artists?

 

Overall, I think time is the biggest issue. Meaning, I wish we had more of it! However, each project has its own set of challenges.

Christian Moeller: long view of untitled baggage claim worker portrait, “bit-map” images in wood

 

Public art commissions are seen as big paydays for the artists, and because of that the competition is always intense, and the results are often hotly debated both by artists and the public. What steps did you take to ensure a fair and transparent process?

 

Christian Moeller: (detail) of untitled portrait of baggage claim workers using wood shelving to create wall-sized “bit-map” images

I don’t know about "big paydays". In this project artists are restricted to receiving a maximum of 15% of the budget for design and project management.   The remaining 85% of the budget is used for fabrication and installation. But, yes the competition is fierce – and that is as it should be.   There is a lot of pressure on everyone involved. The artist wants to make a great work of art without compromise. Staff wants to run a flawless process. The panel wants to jury the work at the highest level possible, and of course the Commission and Board want to provide the highest level of project oversight. Nobody wants to make a mistake and everyone wants success. From the very start, every part of the process is held in open public meetings.

 

Was the composition of each selection panel the same, i.e. equally divided between county officials and art professionals? 

 

It was about 50/50. Every panel included the architect, three County officials, a commissioner, and at least 3 arts professionals. 

 

How were the nominees for each of the projects selected?

 

The majority of these artists were selected in an open competition. Seven of the ten opportunities seen in this exhibition were restricted to artists residing in Northern California. Limited or direct selection processes are not the rule. However in addition to trying to reach as many artists as possible through an RFQ (request for

qualifications), I always do research and invite artists to apply to particular projects based on the purpose of the art at the site or what the public wants the artists to "do". This is an important distinction. My research is rarely, if ever, based on what the public wants the artwork to "be". Artists, especially those who have not made public art before, may not be plugged into the public art network; so like any contemporary art curator or historian, I am always researching, reading, looking at art and encouraging artists to apply to particular projects.

 

Mildred Howard, untitled glass house

How many artists were presented to panelists during the first round of the selection process?

 

It was different for each panel. It varied from about 30 to 250 artists.

 

In public art projects there is always a battle over what portion of the total project cost will be used to calculate the art budget. How did this all play out with the Terminal B project?

 

The Sacramento County code applies to all public projects, not just the Sacramento County Airport System. Unless a different amount is directed by the Board of Supervisors, two percent of the total construction costs of the eligible projects is allocated to art. For this project the Board of Supervisors approved an amount less than the normal 2% called for by the County’s Ordinance for the airport art budget. 

 

What, then, is the total budget for art in this project?

 

$8 million dollars was allocated to the art program. $5 million dollars for art. $1 million for administration of the program (any amount not used for administration will be used for art), and $2 million dollars to be set aside for an endowment. 

 

There was quite a flap last year about that, about money that was allocated to maintenance rather than to funding new works of art in the airport. What are your feelings about that?  

 

Establishing an endowment was a brilliant and visionary decision by the Board. The interest from the endowment will be used to maintain the artwork and to fund temporary public artworks at the airport.  

 

Suzanne Adan, “Flying Colors”, 2009, 16 x 22 inches, oil on paper; virtual view of the piece as a 12 x 18-foot glass teserae floor

Tell us about your background in public art.

 

My love of public art began in 1986 when I read a description of the public art program at the California Arts Council. It was fate, I guess. Although I’ve curated a number of exhibitions in traditional exhibition spaces over the past 20 plus years, my work inevitably moves out of traditional exhibition spaces and into the community.   I came to Sacramento after six years of managing the University of Minnesota public art program where I directed the development and installation of temporary and permanent public artworks on campus throughout the University of Minnesota system. I developed a public art minor program at the University, the first program of its kind in the United States, which has yet to be launched, and taught courses in public art in the Department of Urban Studies and the Department of Landscape Architecture. Among other writings, my essay on the state of public art education in the United States was published by Americans for the Arts in the book titled Public Art by the Book, edited by Barbara Goldstein.  I am also co-editor of the book, Public Art Practice, published by Routledge New York in the spring of 2008. I think I am proudest though, of some of the work I did while working for the City of Fairfield and in Sonoma where I produced works of temporary public art. 

 

Besides the airport project, what other public art projects are you currently managing?

 

Lynn Criswell, model for one segment of a 18 x 30-foot terrazzo floor mosaic, “As the Crow Flies”

The Art in Public Places Program has a small staff that includes myself, a project manager, and program assistant, a part time education coordinator, and a person who works with us part time on maintenance issues. Together we maintain a collection of more than 650 works of art. We produce 12 exhibitions annually in public spaces. We’ve got seven new public art projects in the pipeline and approximately another 15 in the works — not including the airport. 

 

Among local art professionals, it’s a fairly well-known fact that you work a crazy-busy schedule. Give us a glimpse if you will.

 

My average work week is 60 hours. In any given day I can be figuring out how to deal with the tile that is falling off a major work of art, talking to an artist about how to best present their ideas in a public process, developing the budget for a new project, giving a talk about the history of public art to a panel, writing a press release, and researching the artists for a new project.   It’s impossible to be bored and not feel vital in this job. 

 

What other things would you like people to know about this project that I haven’t asked you?

 

I care deeply about this work because I’ve seen it create real and substantial change in communities across the country. 

 – DAVID M. ROTH

 

In Public: Designing Art for the Sacramento International Airport @ Center for Contemporary Art, Sacramento through May 16, 2010.  

 

I rarely drive east on Hwy. 80, but every so often I get the urge to see mountains and snow. This time, however, it wasn’t scenery that lured me out of my hive; it was art. 

 Art in Fallon? Yes, Fallon. Fallon (pop: 7,536) sits in the high desert 40 minutes east of Reno, surrounded by sagebrush, distant peaks, alfalfa fields, a U.S. Naval air station and little else, save cumulous clouds that enclose the Lahontan Valley in a billowy cocoon this time year. On the ground, Fallon looks like a lot of towns in Nevada. On the way in you pass small manufacturing operations and trailer parks before you reach the main drag: a neon-lit strip of chain stores, pawn shops, motels and casinos and a few picture-worthy roadside attractions. Highway 50 runs straight up the middle en route to Austin, the next closest outpost 110 miles east.

L to R: Hwy 50 bet Reno and Fallon; fighter jet; Hwy 50 near Fallon; Top Gun Car Wash sign; Oaks Park Art Center

"Natomas 1, 2, 3", mixed media, 75 x 17 x 13 inches, 2009

"Untitled", mixed media on paper, 14 x 14 inches, 2009

"Confirmation" (detail), mixed media, 87 x 10 x 11 inches, 1998

Lita Albuquerque's "Golden State" installation at the state Capitol. In dollars Sacramento spent, has one of the richest public art programs in the U.S.

Sacramento and art? The two generally don’t show up in the same sentence. Sacramento has always been a drive-by city: a Central Valley town you pass through en route to San Francisco or Lake Tahoe, better known for political rhetoric than painting. In fact, for most of its history, starting with the Gold Rush, this capital city bounded by two rivers-the American and the Sacramento-has been regarded as the artistic stepchild of a lesser god. While that notion still circulates in certain quarters, it no longer has any substance. Read Thomas Albright’s definitive Art in the San Francisco Bay Area: 1945-1980 and you’ll learn about a region that for more than a generation has been awash in artists of near-mythic proportions.

To wit: It was UC Davis faculty members William T. Wiley, Robert Arneson, Robert Hudson, Nathan Oliveira and Roy De Forest who collectively put Northern California on the international art map in the ’60s and early ’70s with satiric, self-parodying style that critics dubbed Dude Ranch Dada. Following suit, though hardly in lockstep, Sac State’s art faculty-which included William Allan, Joan Moment, Steve Kaltenbach, Jim Nutt, Joseph Raffael, Roger Vail, Joan Brown, Oliver Jackson, Peter VandenBerge and Carlos Villa-pushed Sacramento’s reputation even further in the decades that followed.

Never mind Albright’s charge of “stubborn regionalism,” by which he meant the persistence of funk, figuration, ceramics and plein air landscape traditions that brought the region to prominence. The only things Sacramento lacked were consistent institutional support, a network of strong dealers and the necessary quotient of affluent, educated collectors. Today this tree-canopied, government-dominated city of 1.5 million people has all three. The city’s public art budget, swelled by a wave of new Capitol-area construction, is at an all-time high. The number of quality exhibition spaces is growing at a fast clip. And the Crocker Art Museum (see sidebar), is set to quadruple in size by 2010 in a new building designed by Charles Gwathmey, the architect who remade New York’s Guggenheim Museum in 1992.

The forces driving this transformation are simple population growth accompanied by a widespread desire for civic renewal and cross-cultural engagement. Émigrés from LA and the Bay Area, flush with real estate profits and dotcom cash, flooded the area in the past two decades, bringing with them an appetite for fine art and other urban pleasures.

“We’re seeing a very different kind of collector these days,” says Beth Jones, who along with co-partner Lynda Jolley operates JayJay, a warehouse-chic East Sac gallery whose stable includes some of the city’s best-known artists, including Michael Stevens, Suzanne Adan, Roger Vail, Joan Moment, Mark L. Emerson, Kim Squaglia and David Wetzl.

JAYJAY Art Gallery: Pictured L to R: Roger Berry (sculpture in foreground), Susan Keizer, Joan Moment

“Now instead of only thinking about what looks good over the sofa, collectors are asking more serious questions, like what museum collections an artist is in and who else besides us represents them? The level of sophistication is definitely higher.”

The first inklings of a real shift came in the early ’90s, when gallery owners agreed to coordinate openings on the second Saturday of each month. Supported by generous media coverage, including a monthly supplement from a local newspaper, the Second Saturday Art Walk became an instant hit, animating Sacramento’s once languid, downtown streets with throngs of revelers who, while not necessarily conversant with Artforum, nevertheless made Second Saturday a once-a-month social centerpiece. In turn, developers who previously focused on the suburbs began refurbishing the city’s core. Over the past three or four years, they’ve added a slew of loft-style apartment buildings to the city’s existing stock of historic Victorian and Craftsman homes, pulling in restaurants, bars, clubs, boutiques and other businesses. The event now draws upwards of 10,000 people with up to 50 galleries participating city-wide.

The focal point of the Second Saturday action, which extends outward in about a 4-mile radius, is the intersection of 20th and J Streets, otherwise known as Lavender Heights, the historic heart of the city’s gay nightlife district. Always bustling, it’s become even more intense (and a lot louder) in recent years. The catalyst was the renovation of the MARRS Building. This nondescript, block-long concrete hulk was transformed into an architectural showpiece, with restaurants, a newsstand, a coffee shop and the Solomon Dubnick Gallery-a glitzy space specializing in figuration, funk, ceramics and landscape painting by local artists.

The neighborhood’s most noteworthy pioneer was the b. sakata garo gallery.

Barry Sakata of b. sakata garo gallery

In 1998, owner Barry Sakata transformed an 1880s carriage house into a spare, elegant red-brick showcase for local and Bay Area artists, including Katherine Sherwood, Enrique Chagoya, and a sizable UC Davis contingent that includes Hudson, Wiley and the abstract painter Mike Henderson. More recently, Viewpoint Photographic Art Center, a member-supported educational and exhibit space, relocated to the neighborhood, extending a 17-year history of shows from established U.S. and international photographers working in styles ranging from early 19th century processes to the latest digital manipulations.  At the opposite end of midtown, near the corner of 19th & P Streets, you’ll find two area institutions side-by-side in the same building: Axis Gallery, Sacramento’s oldest artists’ cooperative, and the Center for Contemporary Art, Sacramento (CCAS), now in its 19th year. Axis, contrary to what some may think, is not a vanity gallery. Its 14 members are carefully screened, and now include several artists with reputations that extend well outside the region, including the photographer Richard Gilles,

Geoff Tuttle, Moment 1 @ Axis Gallery, a member-run cooperative whose artists have earned national recognition.

 best known for his panoramic images of graffiti-covered power plants, and new media/conceptual artist Jiayi Young whose work appears in this year’s Beijing International Art Biennale. CCAS, a member-supported nonprofit, has mounted several excellent group shows since relocating to midtown in 2005, the most notable being a roundup of top-tier LA artists curated by Cathy and David E. Stone of One Year in LA and a wide-ranging survey of contemporary photography that included Vic Muniz, Mona Kuhn and Todd Hido among others.

Pamela Skinner/Gwenna Howard Contemporary Art is another area magnet. It occupies a renovated 5,000 square-foot, brick warehouse building about half a mile west of CCAS. With its soaring clerestory ceiling it is, without question, the most striking room in the city to view art. Opened in 2006, it shows a mix of abstract painting and figurative sculpture, mostly from Bay Area artists. The strongest is Aaron Petersen whose biomorphic paintings on aluminum have sold briskly. 

Pamela Skinner/Gwenna Howard Gallery

2008 marked the opening of two significant new DIY venues: Tangent, a storefront on Fourth Avenue on the edge of Curtis Park, which specializes in emerging artists, all whom seem to have a flair for material inventiveness, and Block, a tiny upstairs room downtown at the site of the original (now-defunct) Michael Himovitz Gallery that mounts installations and has, in a very short time, generated serious buzz among the new media crowd.

One of the biggest transformations in Sacramento is unfolding in Oak Park, an economically depressed area that’s gotten a lift from 40 Acres Gallery and Cultural Center, a nonprofit complex funded by former NBA star and current mayoral candidate Kevin Johnson. Situated in the heart of the community at 35th and Broadway, the complex includes a gallery that shows nationally known African-American artists, a refurbished theatre, a coffee shop, and an excellent bookstore run by Johnson’s St. Hope Corp., which also operates Sac High, a charter school that brings in well-known artists for extended residencies.

This past summer, 40 Acres mounted a show from local collections that included works by Raymond Saunders, Faith Ringgold, Elizabeth Catlett, Robert Colescott and Carrie Mae Weems. In January it will show selections from Bank of America’s collection, which includes Jean Michel Basquiat, Sam Gilliam, Lorna Simpson and Martin Puryear. 

Robert Colescott (from the "Black" show) @ 40 Acres

“Our mission has been to expose people to the very best,” says Kim Curry-Evans who, when speaking about the gallery, is always quick to add: “It’s not just about doing exhibitions. Really, the emphasis is on education. It’s about how can we use this art to teach the community about the power of what it means to have art in your life?”

At Sac State’s University’s Library Art Gallery, another of the region’s top exhibition spaces, Director Phil Hitchcock expresses a similar idea. “Art,” he observes, “is not a singular activity. It’s not just something that occurs in arts and letters. It can involve science, politics, sociology or almost any discipline you can think of.” Two memorable cases in point include a groundbreaking exhibit of technology-based art in 2003 curated by new media professor, Rachel Clarke, and an equally stunning exhibit of contemporary Korean art last year that included collaborative works from Koo Kyung Sook and Ian Harvey. This month, documentary images of homeless teenagers from Sacramento photographer Kent Lacin go on view.

While galleries are one measure of Sacramento’s artistic maturation, an even more visible indicator is public art. It’s everywhere. Since 1977, the Sacramento Metropolitan Art Commission (SMAC), through its Art in Public Places program, has transformed the region into a virtual museum, with some 600 artworks installed county-wide. About 75 percent are from leading local artists; but there are also significant works by internationally recognized names like Jenny Holzer, Dale Chihuly, Deborah Butterfield and Dennis Oppenheim. Operating on the “two percent for art” formula, SMAC each year distributes between $2 million to $4 million to artists, with an additional $8 million earmarked for art at a new terminal under construction at Sacramento International Airport. “At a time when everything is becoming generic in urban design and planning, public art is part of what gives the community a sense of itself and makes us different from every other place in the world,” observes Shelly Willis, SMAC’s administrator.

Indeed, a quarter mile from the Capitol, visitors can take in California’s largest public art project, the Capitol Area East End Complex. It contains 24 site-specific works situated in and around five state buildings that span a two-block installation called The Golden State. Its focal point, known as the Zone of Discovery, consists of 55 steel-supported glass discs that look like they were deposited by space aliens. Referencing cosmology, alchemy and history, the installation by Lita Albuquerque and Mitchell De Jarnett, includes an anamorph (an image that’s visible only from a single vantage point) of the astronomer Edwin Hubble and a golden orb that echoes the one atop the Capitol. It’s pretty spectacular. Even area developers who don’t use a dime of public money are investing in public art. “90 percent of all the work I have done is for developers who are not required to put one stick of art in their buildings,” says Sac State’s Hitchcock, who has long served as a conduit between builders and artists. “There are so many of them… and they do it with a real passion.”

One high-profile example is sculptor Robert Brady’s 17-foot tall bronze figure, Tor, installed this summer outside the U.S. Bank Tower on Capitol Mall. Like so many others that grace the city, it was cast at the Art Foundry Gallery. This facility handles bronze casting commissions from all over the West, and is widely regarded as Northern California’s best practitioner of that ancient process.

Art Foundry owner Alan Osborne demonstrates bronze casting of Nathan Oliviera sculpture.

Allan Osborne, Foundry’s sculptor-owner, established the business in the historic warehouse district on R Street in 1999, and has been thriving on the growth of public art ever since. His bronze pouring demonstrations on Second Saturdays are consistent crowd pleasers.

The city of Davis, 15 miles west, also knows how to please a crowd. Show up at any of the events organized by the John Natsoulas Center for the Arts and you’ll understand. A funk art dealer for the past 23 years, Natsoulas has, over the past four years, morphed into an impresario whose programs include annual conferences on ceramics and landscape painting which, over three-day weekends, spill out across the city with demonstrations, lectures, panel discussions, workshops and exhibitions. The most entertaining of these is The Davis Jazz Festival: Beyond the Beat Generation, which runs October 4-5. It features “performance painting” accompanied by jazz from historic figures like ex-Monk collaborator David Amram and poetry readings from the likes of Amiri Baraka. True to the spirit of the Beats, the event is free.

On campus, UC Davis’ venerable Richard L. Nelson Gallery, in operation since 1976, features museum-quality exhibits that pull not only from its fast-expanding collection of contemporary and historic works, but also strives to “expand boundaries.” For Director Renny Pritikin, who joined UCD from San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Art Center four years ago, that means “partnering with non-art sources, like cutting-edge science and digital arts, as well as amateur art and popular and material culture.” This fall’s triple bill-of collage artist Laura Breitman, interactive video practitioner Camille Utterback and sculptor Lauren Davies-promises to be good example.

The Pence Gallery, a community-run space a quarter mile off campus, is another must-visit venue if you’re in town. It makes a habit of opening its doors to artists and curators with provocative ideas, like the conceptualist Chris Daubert who earlier this year knocked viewers off balance with his perception-bending installation The Hidden.

Sacramento may have once been an artistic backwater. But the consensus among art professionals today is that the city has changed dramatically. “By every important measure-the number of good galleries, the increase in collectors, the growth in public art and the Crocker’s expansion- it’s clear that Sacramento has come into its own,” says JayJay’s Beth Jones. “It’s not about beating San Francisco or LA; it’s about energizing the audience and reaching a certain level of excellence with respect to contemporary art. I think we’re there.”

#  #  #

This article originally appeared in the September 2008 edition of Art Ltd.

From de Tocqueville to Baudrillard, American history is filled with foreigners who have come to these shores to reveal truths that make us squirm.  When painter/satirist Enrique Chagoya burst onto the Bay Area scene in the mid-1980s, his charcoal-and-pastel drawings did exactly that.  Smash-ups of American pop culture and Mesoamerican myth, his art exposed the concealed ideological baggage that culture carries when it crosses national borders.             Practicing what he calls "reverse anthropology," Chagoya, 54, redraws Latin American history to show the conquistadores (represented by American cartoon and comic book heroes) being vanquished by the natives.  In this violent, sardonic oeuvre in which the artist upends the modernist practice of appropriating primitive art, Aztec and Mayan warriors and ancient goddesses clash with the likes of Superman and the Lone Ranger, oftentimes at length across multi-panel codex books that fold out, accordion-style, like the original pre-Columbian history texts that the Spanish destroyed.

            While such methods and concerns put Chagoya squarely inside the identity-obsessed, appropriationist milieu of ’80s and ’90s, his work has always seemed to operate outside the high-low fracas. No doubt, that distinction helped Chagoya catch the eye of Neo Expressionist painter Sue Coe who introduced Chagoya to the San Francisco dealer Paule Anglim who in turn helped orchestrate his 1994 exhibition at the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco – a precursor to the current 25-year survey ("Enrique Chagoya: Borderlandia") mounted in 2007 by the Des Moines Art Center that travels to the Palm Springs Art Museum for three months beginning Sept. 27.  (The show’s three-month run at the U.C. Berkeley Art Museum ended May 18.)             In the intervening decades, Chagoya has had nearly 40 museum shows in which curators have linked him to the great Mexican muralists (Rivera, Siqueiros and Orozco); the 19^th century political cartoonist José Guadalupe Posada; the French caricaturist Daumier; and to the Russian Constructivists who believed as Chagoya does "that art should be seen as life."  Indeed, in the art verité mode, Chagoya has redrawn Goya’s "Disasters of War" scene-for-scene with contemporary political and religious figures and recast Philip Guston’s "Poor Richard" cycle with a Pinocchio-nosed George W. Bush standing in for Richard Nixon.              Chagoya’s best-known works – charcoal-and-pastel drawings on paper – are practically iconic in the Bay Area where he has lived and worked since emigrating from his native Mexico City in 1977.  Ronald Reagan and Henry Kissinger as Mouseketeers spreading graffiti from buckets of blood and former Gov. Pete Wilson being consumed by Aztec cannibals were two of his more sensational images.  More recently, he pictured the dramatis personae of the current Bush administration as "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" along with the unlikely triumvirate of Bin Laden, Jesus and Gov. Schwarzenegger dressed as ballerinas -  an undisguised swipe at the governor’s "girlie men" crack.              Chagoya draws these large-scale pictures (the biggest are 80" x 80") in red, black and white, fully aware of the color scheme’s agit-prop history, as well as its ancient roots in the legend of Quetzalcoatl who, according to Chagoya, transformed himself into a black ant to learn the origin of corn from a kernel-carrying red ant – a symbolic collision of "opposites that interacted to access truth." Chagoya also makes a frequent practice of creating paintings on canvas collaged with swatches of amate paper – the same fig-leaf bark used by Mesoamerican Indians.              Another of his trademarks is his use of stark differences in scale to represent gross imbalances of power.  In "When Paradise Arrived," the outsized middle finger of Mickey Mouse (inscribed with the words "English Only") flicks an immigrant child like an insect.  Similarly, "Thesis/Antithesis" shows the hard-shoed, power-suited leg of a corporate type pushing the upended bare foot (presumably that of a dispossessed native) into a sea of blood.   In a typical gesture, Chagoya often adds the imprint of his own hand, in smeared down strokes, indicating what can only be interpreted as a collective last grasp.             It’s a sensibility "related to death, which is different than here because in Mexico there’s a cultural influence that comes from before pre-Columbian times in which life is a dream and when you die you wake up," explains Chagoya who lives in San Francisco and teaches art at Stanford.  "It’s a reaction from people to protect themselves against pain."  The aesthetic translation of that ethos is seen in his penchant for dressing evil in the clothes and poses of comic heroes.  "The devil has a beautiful face, just like in the Bible, so I wanted to look for that face.  I never made a portrait of a politician with sharp teeth.  I wanted to make them clowns, and it turned out to be closer to reality."             Goateed, bespectacled and dressed in loose fitting denim with his thinning salt-and-pepper hair pulled straight back, Chagoya looks like a retiring anarchist.  His eyes twinkle when he speaks and he laughs easily, citing art-historical references in a supremely modest manner that betrays none of the anger that underlies his work.             Before moving to the U.S., Chagoya studied economics and contributed political cartoons to newspapers.  He also participated in the student uprisings of the late ’60s and early ’70s that the Mexican government brutally suppressed.  And though he arrived well-educated and politically savvy, he wasn’t prepared for the race-based identity politics that crisscrossed the U.S. art world.  "In Mexico," he explains, "we have conflict, but it’s a conflict based on class, not race.  "Here," he says, speaking of the nationalistic fervor expressed by Bay Area Chicano artists in the ’70s and ’80s, "I felt like I was in a foreign film without subtitles.  Suddenly there’s an ethnic war taking place that I was not aware of."                   Unable to express himself through the prism of race, Chagoya turned to headline news, ancient and modern European art sources and to his own newly bifurcated relationship with American pop culture which, as a youth, he consumed voraciously through translated comic books and TV shows like "Gunsmoke."             Contrary to the evidence in "Borderlandia," which seems to indict U.S. foreign policy unequivocally, Chagoya claims his work is "a mirror on humanity" rather than an exercise in finger pointing.  "There is," he maintains, a measure of "good and evil within every culture" that is accompanied by stereotypes that are designed to propagate ideology.  "All of these stereotypes are created to justify dominance, and that’s what I’m dealing with in my work.  Culture," he asserts, "becomes an imperialistic force, a colonialist force that replaces somebody else’s culture. "If you’d been conquered by the Aztecs," the artist points out, "we’d have pyramids instead of churches."

–DAVID M. ROTH

  Enrique Chagoya’s 25-year survey, "Enrique Chagoya: Borderlandia," is at the Palm Springs Art Museum from Sept. 27 to Dec. 28, 2008.  He is represented by Gallery Paule Anglim in San Francisco and the George Adams Gallery in New York.