SquareCylinder and the Bay Area’s New Era for Art and Art Journalism featured speakers and a panel at the Minnesota Street Project on Saturday, June 7, 2025. From 1-4pm in the atrium the program featured keynote speaker Matt Gonzalez, Patricia Albers spoke about Artweek founding publisher Cecile McCann the launch of the Art Journalism Prize in 2026, and a panel featuring art critic Max Blue, artist Arleene Correa Valencia, gallery owner Wendi Norris, and curator Zully Adler. Following from 4-7pm galleries featuring talks and interviews led by SquareCylinder’s art writers.
On Saturday, June 7, 2025, SquareCylinder will proclaim the rise of a New Eraof art, culture, and particularly art journalism in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond. On that late Spring Saturday afternoon, a month following its April 26th relaunch, SquareCylinder and the Minnesota Street Project invites the public to join us, along with the 14 art galleries that call Dogpatch home (the much anticipated new di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art will open its MSP space in August), to proclaim the Bay Area as the place to be if you are a creative artist or writer asking “where is the best place in America to be if I want to exercise my rights and talents to free expression and free speech?” And to make that our cause.
In an afternoon program headed by keynote speaker Matt Gonzalez, currently serving San Francisco as its Chief Attorney, and working productively as an artist who is represented by Dolby Chadwick, he is one of San Francisco’s most popular polymaths. Gonzalez envisions how visual art will stand tall in one of the nation’s best locations to see and experience art in all of its full creative diversity, and how the Bay Area’s cultural vitality is a key component in furthering the rule of law. Can the Bay Area provide that beacon and serve as that kind of magnet? Guests will find important food for thought once they have heard Mr. Gonzalez’ perspective.
The Dogpatch neighborhood was once virtually unknown to San Franciscans. Yet a mere eight-minute drive down 3rd Street from Oracle Park stands MSP, as many refer to it. That modest location completes the Mission Bay adjacent downtown commercial district, the sports and entertainment powerhouse that South of Market Street has become, and the Design and Mission Districts’ inclusive neighborhoods. It is one of the most important three-by-three-mile patches of land in the country.
What is so great about culture in the Bay Area, visual art in particular given that is what SquareCylinder is all about, is that it is by no means limited to Dogpatch or even San Francisco. It is a Northern California phenomenon, a vital tradition that extends to the East Bay, South Bay, North Bay and beyond. Visual art, along with music and the performing arts, stretches the mind and spirit in a manner that is equally expansive. Into that naturally hospitable environment comes the new incarnation of SquareCylinder, the natural heir in the digital age to Artweek, one of the Bay Area’s most important contributions to quality art journalism. McCann made it that era’s mainstay on the West Coast from 1968 until her retirement in 1988.
If too much of America has grown indifferent, even hostile to the pure freedom that the best visual art embraces, it is SquareCylinder’s purpose to not only discuss but to push, to demand that free expression in art and art criticism strive to maximize that freedom and independence in the best Bay Area and American tradition.
Where we are today and where we wish to go: that is what this program the New Era of Art and Art Journalism is all about. Following Mr. Gonzalez, writer and art historian Patricia Albers will discuss the upcoming, in 2026, of the Cecile McCann Art Journalism Prize. Ms Albers’ talk will be followed by the panel. Moderating it will be Yerba Buena Art Center’s founding Visual Arts Director Renny Pritikin. The panelists will discuss what we must do to get there, and what most stands in the way of that. Some of SquareCylinder’s team of art writers will be present with programming at individual galleries following the panel. The galleries all remain open until 7pm each First Saturday.
The panel is of particular interest not only because of its topic, but the people who will participate in that discussion. Wendi Norris is one of the city’s most successful and visionary gallery owners. Arleene Correa Valencia is among the most dynamic young artists now emerging as a force in the field. Max Blue is regarded by many, including we at SquareCylinder, as one of the most thoughtful voices among the new generation of art critics. Rounding out the panel will be Zully Adler, director of the upcoming Further Triennial that will launch in 2027.
Following the speakers’ program, from 4-7pm all MSP galleries will be open to our guests. A number of galleries will feature special programming in collaboration with SqC’s art writers:
4pm:
John Seed interviews Lauren Davies and Jonathan Parker — Jack Fischer
John Held Jr. delivers his talk, “Mail Art/Zines, Fluxus, and Bay Area Dada” — Bransten
5pm:
DeWitt discusses book art with curator Donna Seager — Nancy Toomey
Max Blue in conversation with Stephen Pace — Altman-Siegel
Ted Barrow interviews Martin Machado — Eleanor Harwood (starts at) 5:30pm
6pm:
Barbara Morris interviews Ajit Chauhan — Anglim/Trimble
Renny Pritikin in conversation with Sean McFarland — Casemore
Note that the programming particulars are subject to change.
Square Cylinder publishers DeWitt Cheng, Bill Lasarow, and Mark Van Proyen invite the public to join us on Saturday, June 7th, starting at 1pm at 1275 Minnesota Street for an afternoon that will set the marker for the upcoming decade (and beyond) of new creativity and freedom, for the launch not just of a digital magazine devoted entirely to visual art, but of the newest opportunity for the Bay Area to once more become the magnet for the kind of cutting edge, freewheeling American culture that it has been before and we believe is poised to become again.
Join with us to see, listen, and discuss this New Era together.
