If you’ve been following along, you know that things haven’t exactly been smooth sailing for San Francisco’s art scene in the last six months. Our last art school announced plans to close. Several galleries called it quits. City budget cuts have decreased arts funding. But in the middle of it all, the community is coming together and finding new ways to support itself. A collaboration between several local galleries, a deep-dive into the history of the Bay Area’s suburban hardcore punk scene, local film history-turned-immersive art, and overdue recognition of the living legend that is Mildred Howard go a long way to remind us all of what we have here. And what we have is something special, something worth fighting for.
Reimagined: The Fisher Collection at 10
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 151 Third Street, San Francisco, California
Ongoing
A decade into its century-long loan to SFMOMA, the Doris and Donald Fisher Collection has gotten a refresh. This comprehensive re-hang of the collection boasts new and newly curated works alike, from immersive Sol LeWitt wall drawings to enchanting William Kentridge animations, totaling almost 250 works. It’s an energizing shake-up, the sort that would be welcome again before another 10 years go by.
Video Craft
Museum of Craft and Design, 2569 Third Street, San Francisco, California
Through August 12
In response to the AI takeover sweeping San Francisco, Video Craft offers a counter-narrative. The show is packed with craft objects and methodologies that precede and engage with video. Featuring nearly 20 artists working in textiles, ceramics, and other mediums, the show creates a fresh and dynamic cross-disciplinary conversation and makes the case for returning to non-digital artistic traditions.
Slice of the Pie
Fraenkel Gallery, 49 Geary Street, San Francisco, California
Through August 15
This collaborative group exhibition brings together 14 local galleries to share Fraenkel Gallery’s wall space, from fellow veterans to relative newcomers. Local artists shine here, from delicate paintings by Rupy C. Tut and Clare Rojas to a sculptural video installation by Julio César Morales and Robert Bechtle’s vision of San Francisco suburbia. It’s a timely reminder of how the community can come together and the strength of what we share.
Demetri Broxton: Ancestral Echoes
Museum of the African Diaspora, 685 Mission Street, San Francisco, California
Through August 16
Known for his intricate mixed-media, beaded pieces exploring Black history, local artist Demetri Broxton mines personal history in Ancestral Echoes. Here, meticulous beadwork and textile assemblages trace his family’s migration from the American South to Oakland, bringing his practice home. Incorporating cowrie shells, Japanese beads, sequins, gold, and family photographs, Broxton draws intimate portraits of the past into hazy focus.
Diedrick Brackens: gather tender night
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission Street, San Francisco, California
Through August 23
Los Angeles-based textile artist Diedrick Brackens’s first solo exhibition in the Bay Area turns the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts into a Garden of Eden. The 15 towering tapestries in gather tender night offer a vision of nature as a site of queer liberation. The figures, often reminiscent of Kara Walker’s cut-paper silhouettes, dance and embrace in pastel landscapes, weaving in and out of the scenery with jubilation and ease.
Disturbing the Peace: Sonoma County’s Early Punk Underground
Museum of Sonoma County, 475 Seventh Street, Santa Rosa, California
Through August 23
Disturbing the Peace spans the 1970s to 1990s of underground hardcore, punk, and screamo music in the North Bay. Full of ephemera, flyers, zines, t-shirts, and photographs, the show itself feels like an underground music venue. Highlighting the rural and suburban settings and anti-fascist undercurrents that shaped the movement, this exhibition proves that punk remains relevant in today’s political climate.
The Shape of Thought
Marin Museum of Contemporary Art, 1210 Fifth Avenue, San Rafael, California
Through August 30
Challenging the incoherence of contemporary life, The Shape of Thought brings together six artists working in abstraction and landscape to embrace slowness and intentionality. Anchored by Jay DeFeo, the show includes Nicole Phungrasamee Fein, Deborah Lohrke, Sandra Ono, Tressa Pack, and Veronica Ryan, whose work bears the fruits of sustained effort and careful attention across collage, sculpture, ink on paper, and more.
Caguiat Delacruz: The Tramp
Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, 145 Hooper Street, San Francisco, California
Through November 21
The first institutional collaboration between artists Justin Caguiat and Rafael Delacruz, this show illuminates a snapshot of local film history. Based on Charlie Chaplin’s tramp, whose first appearance was filmed in the Bay Area, the duo’s film transports the character into the streets of Oakland and coastal farm country. In a twist of movie magic, the immersive installation puts viewers in the tramp’s shoes, too. The show is on view at the Wattis Institute at the California College of the Arts, which will close at the end of the 2026–27 school year, becoming a satellite campus of Vanderbilt University.
Mildred Howard: Poetics of Memory
Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak Street, Oakland, California
Through October 18
A defining Bay Area artist for five decades, Mildred Howard is finally getting her due. The 2025 Guggenheim Fellow’s first major museum survey spans her career and impact across sculpture, collage, and installation, exploring Black history in the Bay Area and beyond. Howard’s life and legacy are on full display here, illustrating one artist’s commitment to and impact on the region.
Treasures of the Pharaohs
de Young Museum, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, San Francisco, California
August 1–January 7, 2027
While its blockbuster shows in recent years have veered contemporary, the de Young returns to antiquity with Treasures of the Pharaohs. A standard helping of Western museum fare, the 130 works on view include the United States debut of a swath of artifacts from Aten, or the “Golden City,” shining a light on the history of this newly excavated community of artisans.
