With over 35,000,000 visitors a year, it could be argued that it is the busiest museum in the world. Yet most people are there to catch a plane. [more inside]
posted by oneirodynia on Jun 12, 2008 - 8 comments

So you'd like to see daily photographs taken in San Francisco and the surrounding Bay Area? You can start with What I'm Seeing and supplement your viewing with the following sites. [more inside]
posted by whir on Jun 12, 2008 - 10 comments

The world's largest ball pit? 400,000 black plastic balls, one reservoir, thousands of happy goths. Other unusual things being filled with balls: the Spanish Steps, Rome, a co-worker's cube, San Francisco. (videos)
posted by Leon-arto on Jun 10, 2008 - 44 comments

San Francisco's Hugo Hotel, the current home of Brian Goggin's Defenestration, has been seized by eminent domian and will probably be demolished. Fear not; San Francisco has many other ancient hotels.
posted by fandango_matt on Jan 28, 2008 - 17 comments

Postcards from Our Awesome Future. [via] An art exhibition stemming from the minds of Packard Jennings (whose illustrations have appeared in Adbusters) and Steve Lambert (of Anti-Advertising Agency fame); using San Francisco's infrastructure as a model for improvement, the duo answered the siren call of Objectivism through an arcology devoid of “...budgets, beauracracy [sic], politics, or physics”. [more inside]
posted by Smart Dalek on Jan 8, 2008 - 11 comments

The mission stencil story is an interactive, choose-your-own-adventure story that takes place on the sidewalks of the Mission district in San Francisco. Via
posted by jonson on Jul 13, 2007 - 14 comments

Misako Inaoka is a Japanese born artist living and working in San Francisco who makes her own ecosystems where the real and the artificial intertwine. She is currently showing at the Johansson Projects gallery. [via]
posted by grapefruitmoon on May 30, 2007 - 6 comments

Requiem for La Contessa: After she was set afire in December, three questions arose: who burned her, why, and what became of her figurehead? The first two have been answered, but the third remains a mystery despite the sculpture's brief appearance in a photo on tribe.net.
posted by fandango_matt on Feb 3, 2007 - 8 comments

2 years ago I FPP'd FlavorPill, a company that sends out permission-based emails for books (Boldtype), music (Earplug), and fashion (the JC Report). They've since added ArtKrush (it's art, stupid! - nsfw) and Activate (world events) to their aresenal. In addition to the topic-specific mailing lists, they offer city-specific lists for London, New York, SF, LA, and Chicago. Sample issues are archived on the site.
posted by dobbs on Aug 11, 2006 - 6 comments

I've linked their site before, but now Fecal Face has instructional How Tos: Stuff a Mouse, Make an Oil Painting, Screen Print a Poster, Make a Mini-Comic/Zine. The site has many other features as well but remember that where there's art, the occasional nsfw image may wait, brooding.
posted by dobbs on Jul 27, 2006 - 9 comments

The idea behind the Parking art project is pretty simple: once you throw some coins in the meter, you can do pretty much anything with a parking space, right? Rebar decided to try converting some vehicle space into a community space, by laying sod, adding benches and a tree, then letting people enjoy the space for a few hours. [via treehugger]
posted by mathowie on Dec 17, 2005 - 32 comments

16thandmission: Urban Data Stories is "an investigation into the interplay of data, interactivity and narrative in an urban environment. It takes as its focus the corner of 16th and Mission Streets in San Francisco.... Depending on the state of the bus system at any given moment, the narratives interrelate to a variety of degrees with the map framework." [For you non-san-franciscans, 16th and Mission is a well-known intersection - lively, multicultural, gritty]
posted by vacapinta on May 8, 2002 - 9 comments

SFMOMA appoints Neal Benezra as new director. Benezra was formerly the deputy director and curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at The Art Institute of Chicago, and replaces David Ross, who left the museum in a hurry last August to become chairman of the board of Eyestorm. During his tenure, Ross spent $140 million on acquisitions for the museum; Elaine McKeon, chairwoman of the Museum's board told the NYTimes that "We will still continue purchasing works of art, but we are going to move more slowly." Benezra has ties to Hunk and Moo Anderson, and wrote the catalog essay for the 2000 show of the Anderson collection. Could this mean that the Anderson collection will eventually be gifted to SFMOMA? (sfgate story, nytimes story)
posted by msippey on Mar 14, 2002 - 4 comments

Artist-in-Residence Program at the landfill. There are plenty of "found object" artists out there, but in this particularly enlightened recycling program, the Sanitary Fill Company pitches in to the process in a big way.
posted by badstone on Mar 8, 2002 - 2 comments

I MUST go see this exhibit in San Francisco. If I had to choose my favorite artistic medium, and the greatest practitioner of that medium, it would be the amazing black and white landscape photos by Ansel Adams.
posted by msacheson on Aug 3, 2001 - 11 comments

Stretcher.org launched today, a "grassroots publication...providing a critical, informative survey of visual art and culture in the Bay Area and beyond with a provocative mixture of essays, dialogs, artist projects, and reviews by local, national and international contributors." It's about time -- the Bay Area is in desparate need of more sophisticated and in-depth art coverage than the Comical, Guardian or Weekly currently provide.
posted by msippey on Jun 5, 2001 - 3 comments