San Francisco Arts and Culture Scene Comes to Life in 2022 | India is blooming

The San Francisco Chinese Chamber of Commerce is bringing back its public art project with the Year of the Tiger Parade, which is part of the Chinese New Year festivities that last this year and culminates with the return of the Chinese New Year Parade on Saturday February 19. Six life-size tiger sculptures created by local artists are on display throughout the city until February 19. Find where to see the tigers on parade here: https://chineseparade.com/tiger-on-parade/

San Francisco Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA SF) | Neighbourhood: Dogpatch

Ahead of its official opening in September, ICA SF welcomes audiences indoors from January through April with Meantime, a series of pop-up exhibitions by Bay Artists. Among the exhibits is Ancient as Time, a new installation commissioned by Oakland-based tattoo and textile artist Chris Martin. Large, soft sculptures use expressive lettering and language drawn from hip hop and blues music, books, documentaries, and everyday conversation. Monumental hand-cut and sewn tapestry banners tell surreal stories of religion, captivity and freedom, referencing traditional American and seafaring tattoos recoded to reflect the history and tales of the African-American experience. American.

A non-collecting art museum, ICA SF will feature a major exhibition of works by Choctaw-Cherokee artist Jeffrey Gibson when it fully opens in September. The new museum occupies a renovated 11,000 square foot 1940s brick building that once housed a painting business. For opening hours, visit https://www.icasanfrancisco.org/visit. Free entry.

San Francisco Ballet (SF Ballet) | Neighborhood: Civic Center

SF Ballet, a dance innovator since its founding in 1933, begins its repertoire season and Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson’s 37th and final season in February with the live world premiere of Cathy Marston’s Mrs. Robinson. The ballet, presented February 1-12 at the War Memorial Opera House, arrives after a two-year postponement of its debut due to Covid-19. For more information on the full repertoire season, visit https://www.sfballet.org/

Tomasson’s successor as artistic director at the end of 2022 will be Tamara Rojo. She will be the first new artistic director of SF Ballet in nearly four decades and the first woman to lead the internationally acclaimed company. Rojo comes to San Francisco from London’s English National Ballet (ENB), where she served as Artistic Director and Principal Principal for nine and a half years, raising the company’s profile through excellence and innovation. , winning awards and accolades and championing female choreographers.

The Ute and William K. Bowes, Jr. Center for Performing Arts | Neighborhood: Civic Center

The new $200 million Bowes Center for Performing Arts at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music opens February 12. The Bowes Center will present hundreds of performances each year, 90% of which will be free to the public.

The new 12-story white and glass building designed by Mark Cavagnero Associates is located across from Davies Symphony Hall, one block south of City Hall. A new center for music and collaboration, the Bowes Center is a “vertical campus” where students can create, learn and share music. It has a glassed-in performance space overlooking the City Hall dome and other performance spaces that can be seen by passers-by on the street. Visit https://sfcm.edu/performance-calendar for more information.

San Francisco Opera | Neighborhood: Civic Center

In September, San Francisco Opera will kick off its Centennial Season honoring the company’s first 100 years while renewing its commitment to innovation. San Francisco Opera is only the third American opera company in history to reach this centennial milestone. The opening weekend of the centenary season from September 9 to 11 includes an opening concert and the world premiere of John Adams’ Antony and Cleopatra and is followed by seven other main operas, additional concerts and community events until July 1, 2023. The centenary season opens September 9 with an opening concert followed by eight main operas, additional concerts and community events until July 1, 2023. For more details , visit https://sfopera.com/opera-100/. In addition to the Opera’s 100th season, this year also marks the 90th anniversary of the War Memorial Opera House. San Francisco was the first in the United States to build a civic opera house as well as the first to vote municipal support for a symphony orchestra.

Caroline H. Hume’s musical director, Eun Sun Kim, ushers in a new era for San Francisco opera. For her first season as Music Director, which kicked off with the return of shows to the War Memorial Opera House last August, the 2022-23 season marks a strong comeback. Kim, who is both the first woman and the first Asian to serve as music director at a major opera company in the United States, was recently named the New York Times Breakout Star 2021.

The New Conservatory Theater Center (NCTC) | Neighbourhood: Hayes Valley

NCTC, San Francisco’s premier LGBTQ+ and allied performing arts institution and progressive arts education conservatory since 1981, continues to celebrate 40 years of serving the Bay Area’s LGBTQ+ community with an exciting 2022 season. of plays. The anniversary celebration culminates with Encore, a magically melodious cabaret of iconic numbers from a songbook of over 50 musical productions that have lit up the NCTC stage. Featuring hit songs from mega-hit musicals and hidden gems from indie darlings, Encore runs from May 13 to June 12. For details on all performances, visit https://www.nctcsf.org/Shows.

Asian Arts Museum | Neighborhood: Civic Center

The Asian Art Museum unveiled its Akiko Yamazaki and Jerry Yang Pavilion in June 2021 with Continuity, an immersive digital marvel from teamLab, the Tokyo-based international art collective. The new 8,500 square foot pavilion is the centerpiece of the museum’s five-year transformation project and San Francisco’s largest new art exhibition space. On view through February, Continuity features 14 motion-sensitive luminous artworks that fill entire galleries and are hyper-sensitive to human activity. The Asian Art Museum features the most comprehensive collection of Asian art outside of Asia. For more information, visit https://asianart.org/.

California Academy of Sciences | Location: Golden Gate Park

Premiering last November, the California Academy of Sciences’ all-new original, all-digital planetarium show, Living Worlds, takes viewers on an eye-opening exploration of how life has transformed Earth’s surface and atmosphere over the billions of years old, and invites the public to travel across the cosmos in search of life in our solar system and beyond. Narrated by Daveed Diggs, Living Worlds is the eighth original in-house product from the Academy’s award-winning visualization studio. It was named the winner of the 2021 Dome Fest West #BestOfEarth Award for Science and Education. Living Worlds plays daily in the Academy’s Morrison Planetarium. Visit https://www.calacademy.org/ for more details and show times.

La Familia Santana Mural | Neighbourhood: Mission District

One of the Mission District’s newest murals, La Familia Santana, was unveiled last October and celebrates the incredible musical heritage of the Santana family. Located in the BART plaza at 24th Street, the mural pays tribute to members of the Santana family, Josefina and Jose; two of their sons, Carlos and Jorge; and one of the grandchildren, Salvador, son of Carlos. It is dedicated to Jorge, who died in May 2020. The year-long mural project was painted by award-winning artist Mark Bode and developed and overseen by Lisa Brewer of Mission Art415, Dr. Annie Rodriquez and Dr. Bernardo Gonzalez . For more information, visit https://missionart415sf.org/.

FOR-SITE Foundation | Venue: Outer Richmond

Lands End, the latest installation from the team behind Ai Wei Wei’s legendary @Large exhibit on Alcatraz, debuted last November and transformed the site of the former Cliff House restaurant into an immersive and engaging collection of works all focused on climate change. Twenty-seven works by contemporary artists and collectives from around the world are on display until March 27. Plan your visit here: https://www.for-site.org/project/landend/.

Archives of letters | Neighbourhood: Dogpatch

Letterform Archive launched the first exhibition in its new custom-designed gallery last November. The exhibition, Bauhaus Typography at 100, draws a line between the iconic Bauhaus style and the form of typography today and features more than 150 pieces from the archive’s permanent collection, including works by Johannes Itten , Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, László Moholy-Nagy, Herbert Bayer, Joost Schmidt and Friedl Dicker. The exhibition runs until April 28. Find more information at https://letterformarchive.org/.

Visit SF Travel’s extensive winter-spring calendar of exhibitions, theater performances, music and film festivals to find out more.

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