MFA Graduate Exhibition
MFA Film Screening
MA Symposium
MA Collaborative Project
134th Commencement
The San Francisco Art Institute is proud to present its 2012 Graduate Events, which showcase student work that continues the school’s legacy of innovative thinking and experimentation, and encourage the public to engage with new talents in the Bay Area art scene.
MFA Graduate Exhibition
Nearly 100 graduating MFA students working in painting, photography, printmaking, film, sculpture, installation, digital media, performance, and across disciplines will transform the iconic Phoenix Hotel, continuing the Bay Area tradition of artists and curators seeking alternative spaces for exhibition and production. Artists will exhibit diverse, ambitious work in individual guest rooms, the poolside courtyard, and other spaces throughout the hotel, and many have created pieces and installations specifically responding to the site.
Opening Reception
Friday, May 11, 6–8pm
Free and open to the public
Exhibition Dates
Friday, May 11 to Sunday, May 13
Open daily noon–10pm
Free and open to the public
The Phoenix Hotel
601 Eddy Street
San Francisco, CA 94109
The public is also invited to purchase tickets to an exclusive Preview Party on May 10, with net proceeds benefitting SFAI’s scholarship fund.
MFA Film Screening
SFAI partners with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art to showcase works by graduating MFA Film students. From an experimental documentary about the Occupy movement to an animated short starring an otter and lemur living in a submarine, the films spotlight the artists’ engaged and idiosyncratic approaches.
Friday, May 11, 1–3pm
Free and open to the public
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Phyllis Wattis Theater
151 3rd Street, San Francisco, CA 94103
MA Thesis Symposium
Graduating students in SFAI’s Master of Arts programs in Exhibition and Museum Studies, History and Theory of Contemporary Art, Urban Studies, and the MA/MFA Dual Degree will present selections of their completed theses. Engaging diverse topics across global contemporary art practices, this year’s cohort has taken up such subjects as the place of the Iraqi National Museum in the public imaginary, the resituating of Ana Mendieta for contemporary Cuban artists, and the “crude politics” of aesthetic radicalism in the post-Soviet context.
Monday, May 7, 10am–5pm
Free and open to the public
San Francisco Art Institute
800 Chestnut Street, San Francisco, CA 94133
MA Collaborative Project
The Mid-Market Art Project (MAPP) presents: Storied Sites: Architecture, Politics, and People
MMAP is a collaborative endeavor—comprising research, site-specific art installations commissioned for San Francisco’s Mid-Market neighborhood, a project publication, and an exhibition—that investigates the role of the arts within the sociopolitical forces of “urban renewal” and its effect on the geographic area in which it operates.
134th Commencement Ceremony
May 12, 2012
SFAI will be awarding an Honorary Doctorate to Roberta Smith, a chief art critic for the New York Times; the Douglas MacAgy Award to poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, co-founder of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers and longtime participant in SFAI’s Open Drawing Studio; and a Special Recognition Award to Trustee Emeritus Beverly James.
About the San Francisco Art Institute
Founded in 1871, the San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI), a nonprofit art college, is one of the nation’s oldest and most prestigious schools of higher education in contemporary art. A small school with global impact—notable faculty and alumni include Richard Diebenkorn, Ansel Adams, Annie Leibovitz, Enrique Chagoya, Kathryn Bigelow, Peter Pau, Ruby Yang, Paul Kos, George Kuchar, Lance Acord, and Kehinde Wiley—SFAI enrolls approximately 650 students in undergraduate and graduate programs, and offers a wide range of continuing education courses and public programs. The historic Chestnut Street campus is located in San Francisco’s Russian Hill neighborhood, and the Graduate Center is located in San Francisco’s Dogpatch neighborhood.
For more information, please visit www.sfai.edu.
