Museo Italo Americano presents “Legàmi/Bonds” at Fort Mason Center For Arts & Culture. “Legàmi/Bonds” connects art, artists, and donors through selected works by 44 artists from the Museo’s permanent collection.
“Legàmi/Bonds” connects art, artists, and donors through selected works by 44 artists from the Museo’s permanent collection.
The exhibition features works from local artists Beniamino Bufano and Lawrence Ferlinghetti to international figures such as Giorgio De Chirico and Tina Modotti.
Ongoing
Tuesday to Saturday, 12:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Sunday, 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.
Museo Italo Americano, Building C, First Floor, Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture, 2 Marina Boulevard, San Francisco
$10
Free On Thursdays
Museo Italo Americano presents “Legàmi/Bonds” at Fort Mason Center For Arts & Culture.
“Legàmi/Bonds” connects art, artists, and donors through selected works by 44 artists from the Museo’s permanent collection.
Sign up today for the latest news from Fort Mason Center For Arts & Culture.
Join Fort Mason Center For Arts & Culture’s resident organization, Arion Press, a fine art, handcrafted artist book publisher, for “Craft Talk #5: Meditations on Gold With Maya Kini,” part of a continuing series of events.
Local goldsmith and poet Maya Kini shares insights into her creative process. Grounded in goldsmithing practice, these meditations reflect on craft as a site where memory, history, and value converge. Gold is approached as a performative material with its worth activated through labor, display, exchange, and inheritance.
Through heirlooms and handmade objects, this talk considers how intimate acts of wearing and passing down gold are entangled with histories of labor, displacement, exploitation, and environmental destruction, and how contemporary goldsmithing might hold, reveal, or resist these layered legacies.
Maya Kini is a poet and goldsmith based in San Francisco. Her writing explores the intersections of craft, language, and the body – examining how making and materiality shape perception, memory, and repair. As a goldsmith, Kini reflects on material transformation, endurance, and loss, as well as the many ways gold has shaped history and carried stories across time. Part artist, part historian, her practice seeks to understand how materials perform both physically and poetically.
Kini’s jewelry and sculptural work have been exhibited nationally and internationally and featured in numerous publications. She has taught at Penland School of Crafts, California State University (CSU)–Sacramento, and Sacramento City College. She holds an MFA in Metalsmithing from Cranbrook Academy of Art and a BA in Spanish Literature from Reed College. She is a 2025–26 Brown Handler Resident with the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library. Kini works out of a studio cooperative on historic Varda Landing in Sausalito, CA.
Thursday, February 19, 2026
6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. (Doors 6:00 p.m.)
Talk is one hour.
Reception to follow in the Arion Press Gallery, First Floor
Arion Press & Bayfront Theatre, Building B, First & Third Floors, Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture, 2 Marina Boulevard, San Francisco
$10
Arion Press:
ArionPress.com
www.EventBrite.com
(415) 668-2542
ArionPress@ArionPress.com
Maya Kini:
MayaKini.com
Sign up today for the latest news from Fort Mason Center For Arts & Culture.
SF Camerawork (SFC) hosts Charles Victor Brewer – Dear Drag: A Pop-Up Exhibition in Landmark Building A at Fort Mason Center For Arts & Culture (FMCAC). Dear Drag is a heartfelt love letter to Sacramento, CA’s vibrant drag community.
SF Camerawork (SFC) hosts Charles Victor Brewer — Dear Drag: A Pop-Up Exhibition in Landmark Building A at Fort Mason Center For Arts & Culture (FMCAC). Dear Drag is a heartfelt love letter to Sacramento, CA’s vibrant drag community.
Highlighting the spirit, diversity, and creative force of Sacramento drag, this project embraces self-expression, chosen family, and artistic agency through intimate photographic storytelling – celebrating the beauty, resilience, and joy of drag culture.
Through tender portraits and collaborative image-making, Brewer captures the nuances of a community that continues to shape Sacramento’s cultural landscape. Each photograph honors the performer’s individuality while recognizing the shared histories, struggles, and triumphs that bind them together.
The series invites viewers to witness drag not only as performance, but as a powerful mode of self-definition and resistance. By centering the voices and visions of local artists, Dear Drag uplifts the everyday brilliance that sustains queer communities. This pop-up exhibition offers a rare and moving glimpse into a world built on creativity, kinship, and unapologetic authenticity.
Charles Victor Brewer is a visual artist with a passion for photographic storytelling. Brewer finds photography to be one of the most influential and impactful forms of communication within contemporary society and evolutionary history. With photography’s vastness of possibility, the medium creates an exponentially open space for communication, thought and inspiration within daily life, understanding of the world, and as the most previous keepsake of memory.
With a great interest in portrait, editorial, and commercial photography, Brewer’s work displays a range of creativity through a diversely curated portfolio and interests within professional photographic practice. From individual, environmental portraits to large-scale, commercial productions, Brewer is dedicated to working closely with each client in bringing their vision to life through the power of imagery and story.
Brewer has a Bachelors of Fine Art in Photography from California State University Sacramento. He is currently based outside of Sacramento and travels wherever the creative wind blows.
Wednesday through Friday, December 3 to 5, 2025; Thursday through Saturday, December 11 to 13, 2025; Thursday through Saturday, December 18 to 20, 2025; Friday and Saturday, January 2 and 3, 2026; and Wednesday to Friday, January 7 to 9, 2026.
Hours on the above days are 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.
Opening Reception with the artist:
Saturday, December 13, 2025, 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.
SF Camerawork, Building A, Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture, 2 Marina Boulevard, San Francisco
Free
SFCamerawork.org
(415) 487-1011
info@SFCamerawork.org
Charles Victor Brewer:
CharlesVictorPhoto.com
(707) 398 -7480
charles@CharlesVictorPhoto.com
Sign up today for the latest news from Fort Mason Center For Arts & Culture.
Museo Italo Americano presents “Legàmi/Bonds” at Fort Mason Center For Arts & Culture. “Legàmi/Bonds” connects art, artists, and donors through selected works by 44 artists from the Museo’s permanent collection.
“Legàmi/Bonds” connects art, artists, and donors through selected works by 44 artists from the Museo’s permanent collection.
The exhibition features works from local artists Beniamino Bufano and Lawrence Ferlinghetti to international figures such as Giorgio De Chirico and Tina Modotti.
Through Friday, March 20, 2026
Tuesday to Saturday, 12:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Sunday, 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.
Museo Italo Americano, Building C, First Floor, Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture, 2 Marina Boulevard, San Francisco
$10
Free On Thursdays
Museo Italo Americano presents “Legàmi/Bonds” at Fort Mason Center For Arts & Culture.
“Legàmi/Bonds” connects art, artists, and donors through selected works by 44 artists from the Museo’s permanent collection.
Sign up today for the latest news from Fort Mason Center For Arts & Culture.
Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture’s resident group Museo Italo Americano has online and in-person shopping and in-person and Zoom events during 2025.
Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture’s resident group Museo Italo Americano has online and in-person shopping and in-person and Zoom events during 2025.
Find wonderful gifts at the Museo’s online shop. You can also visit the shop in-person, Tuesday through Saturday, 12:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. and Sunday, 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. Discover beautiful Murano glass hearts; fused- and blown-glass jewelry; brilliant blown-glass and fused-glass birds; books; and Italia-branded men’s items.
“Cena & Telechat [Virtual Version]” conversations over meals or wine or prosecco continue on Mondays, November 17, 2025 and December 15, 2025; from 6:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. Conversations are in Italian and happen on Zoom. (FREE for members, $10 for non-members). Register online; email info@SFMuseo.org; or call (415) 673-2200.
“Antipasti d’Autunno” invites all to savor the flavors of Autumn in Italy with an evening that celebrates the season’s bounty on Wednesday, November 5, 2025, 6:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Enjoy exquisite regional dishes paired with fine Italian wines, thoughtfully curated to capture the essence of Fall. Renowned Chef Alfredo Ancona of Angelino Restaurant in Sausalito, CA guides attendees on this culinary journey, showcasing the rich traditions and diversity of Italian cuisine. Jason Chietti, Vice President of Siena Imports, pairs special Italian wines to compliment the meal. he evening concludes with an Opportunity Drawing, offering the chance to win local restaurant gift cards, select wines, Italian lessons at the Museo, and other enticing prizes. ($150 for members, $200 for non-members)
Evening Program
Hosted Aperitivo: 6:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.
Dinner: 7:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.
“Discover Calabria” features a talk with Franco Cirelli and celebrates the beauty of Calabria on Sunday, November 16, 2025, 4:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. This lecture is part of the Museo’s “Regional Sunday Series.” ($10 for members, $20 for non-members)
Saturday, October 25, 2025; Wednesday, Sunday & Monday, November 5, 16 & 17, 2025 & Monday, December 15, 2025
October 25, 2025: 3:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.
November 5, 2025: 6:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.
November 16, 2025: 4:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.
November 17 & December 15, 2025: 6:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.
Museo Italo Americano, Building C, First Floor, Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture, 2 Marina Boulevard, San Francisco
Free to $200
Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture’s resident group Museo Italo Americano has online and in-person shopping and in-person and Zoom events during 2025.
SFMuseo.org
(415) 673-2200
info@SFMuseo.org
Sign up today for the latest news from Fort Mason Center For Arts & Culture.
Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture’s resident group Museo Italo Americano has online and in-person shopping and in-person and Zoom events during 2025.
Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture’s resident group Museo Italo Americano has online and in-person shopping and in-person and Zoom events during 2025.
Find wonderful gifts at the Museo’s online shop. You can also visit the shop in-person, Tuesday through Saturday, 12:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. and Sunday, 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. Discover beautiful Murano glass hearts; fused- and blown-glass jewelry; brilliant blown-glass and fused-glass birds; books; and Italia-branded men’s items.
“Cena & Telechat [Virtual Version]” conversations over meals or wine or prosecco continue on Mondays, November 17, 2025 and December 15, 2025; from 6:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. Conversations are in Italian and happen on Zoom. (FREE for members, $10 for non-members). Register online; email info@SFMuseo.org; or call (415) 673-2200.
“Antipasti d’Autunno” invites all to savor the flavors of Autumn in Italy with an evening that celebrates the season’s bounty on Wednesday, November 5, 2025, 6:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Enjoy exquisite regional dishes paired with fine Italian wines, thoughtfully curated to capture the essence of Fall. Renowned Chef Alfredo Ancona of Angelino Restaurant in Sausalito, CA guides attendees on this culinary journey, showcasing the rich traditions and diversity of Italian cuisine. Jason Chietti, Vice President of Siena Imports, pairs special Italian wines to compliment the meal. he evening concludes with an Opportunity Drawing, offering the chance to win local restaurant gift cards, select wines, Italian lessons at the Museo, and other enticing prizes. ($150 for members, $200 for non-members)
Evening Program
Hosted Aperitivo: 6:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.
Dinner: 7:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.
“Discover Calabria” features a talk with Franco Cirelli and celebrates the beauty of Calabria on Sunday, November 16, 2025, 4:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. This lecture is part of the Museo’s “Regional Sunday Series.” ($10 for members, $20 for non-members)
Saturday, October 25, 2025; Wednesday, Sunday & Monday, November 5, 16 & 17, 2025 & Monday, December 15, 2025
October 25, 2025: 3:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.
November 5, 2025: 6:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.
November 16, 2025: 4:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.
November 17 & December 15, 2025: 6:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.
Museo Italo Americano, Building C, First Floor, Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture, 2 Marina Boulevard, San Francisco
Free to $200
Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture’s resident group Museo Italo Americano has online and in-person shopping and in-person and Zoom events during 2025.
SFMuseo.org
(415) 673-2200
info@SFMuseo.org
Sign up today for the latest news from Fort Mason Center For Arts & Culture.
Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture’s resident group Museo Italo Americano has online and in-person shopping and in-person and Zoom events during 2025.
Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture’s resident group Museo Italo Americano has online and in-person shopping and in-person and Zoom events during 2025.
Find wonderful gifts at the Museo’s online shop. You can also visit the shop in-person, Tuesday through Saturday, 12:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. and Sunday, 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. Discover beautiful Murano glass hearts; fused- and blown-glass jewelry; brilliant blown-glass and fused-glass birds; books; and Italia-branded men’s items.
“Cena & Telechat [Virtual Version]” conversations over meals or wine or prosecco continue on Mondays, November 17, 2025 and December 15, 2025; from 6:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. Conversations are in Italian and happen on Zoom. (FREE for members, $10 for non-members). Register online; email info@SFMuseo.org; or call (415) 673-2200.
“Antipasti d’Autunno” invites all to savor the flavors of Autumn in Italy with an evening that celebrates the season’s bounty on Wednesday, November 5, 2025, 6:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Enjoy exquisite regional dishes paired with fine Italian wines, thoughtfully curated to capture the essence of Fall. Renowned Chef Alfredo Ancona of Angelino Restaurant in Sausalito, CA guides attendees on this culinary journey, showcasing the rich traditions and diversity of Italian cuisine. Jason Chietti, Vice President of Siena Imports, pairs special Italian wines to compliment the meal. he evening concludes with an Opportunity Drawing, offering the chance to win local restaurant gift cards, select wines, Italian lessons at the Museo, and other enticing prizes. ($150 for members, $200 for non-members)
Evening Program
Hosted Aperitivo: 6:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.
Dinner: 7:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.
“Discover Calabria” features a talk with Franco Cirelli and celebrates the beauty of Calabria on Sunday, November 16, 2025, 4:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. This lecture is part of the Museo’s “Regional Sunday Series.” ($10 for members, $20 for non-members)
Saturday, October 25, 2025; Wednesday, Sunday & Monday, November 5, 16 & 17, 2025 & Monday, December 15, 2025
October 25, 2025: 3:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.
November 5, 2025: 6:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.
November 16, 2025: 4:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.
November 17 & December 15, 2025: 6:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.
Museo Italo Americano, Building C, First Floor, Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture, 2 Marina Boulevard, San Francisco
Free to $200
Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture’s resident group Museo Italo Americano has online and in-person shopping and in-person and Zoom events during 2025.
SFMuseo.org
(415) 673-2200
info@SFMuseo.org
Sign up today for the latest news from Fort Mason Center For Arts & Culture.
Join Gateway Public Schools at their Matters Of The Mind: Rise Up signature fundraising event in Gallery 308, Landmark Building A at Fort Mason Center For Arts & Culture.
Join Gateway Public Schools at their Matters Of The Mind: Rise Up signature fundraising event in Gallery 308, Landmark Building A at Fort Mason Center For Arts & Culture. Matters Of The Mind is an incredible evening of community celebration, student and teacher speakers, and dinner with fellow public education advocates. Tickets include a happy hour at The Interval At Long Now before dinner, a program at the beautiful Gallery 308, and a celebratory after-party!
Matters Of The Mind takes place on Thursday, November 19, 2025, from 5:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. at two locations in Building A.
SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.
Reception At The Interval At Long Now
Networking and meet-and-greet with student and teacher speakers. Hosted bar of masterful cocktails, wine, beer, and zero-ABV options.
The Interval and Gallery 308 are just 100 feet apart in Building A.
Check-in begins at 6:30 p.m.; prompt program start at 7:00 p.m.
7:00 p.m.
Dinner & Program At Gallery 308
Gateway students and teachers present topics such as mental health, belonging, mentorship, and career inspiration. Get ready for a fun and engaging evening that leaves everyone inspired.
2025 Community Impact Honoree: Boys & Girls Club Of San Francisco
Honoring partners and individuals who make an extraordinary difference for the Gateway community.
9:00 p.m.
After Party At The Interval At Long Now
Continue the party with DJ beats and a no-host bar.
Gateway Public Schools is a public charter school organization and a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization committed to providing a rigorous, college-preparatory education to a diverse student body of 800 scholars. Gateway is located in San Francisco’s Western Addition/Fillmore neighborhood. Deeply committed to educational equity, Gateway meets each student where they are, believing in the potential of every young person and working tirelessly to narrow the education and opportunity gap that exists between low-income students and their more privileged peers.
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Date
Wednesday, November 19, 2025
Time
5:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.
Location
Gallery 308 & The Interval At Long Now, Building A, Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture, 2 Marina Boulevard, San Francisco
Cost
$150 to $20,000 ($158.29 to $21,064.03 with fees)
Join Gateway Public Schools at their Matters Of The Mind: Rise Up signature fundraising event in Gallery 308, Landmark Building A at Fort Mason Center For Arts & Culture.
www.GatewayPS.org
(415) 749-3600
office@GatewayHigh.org
Sign up today for the latest news from Fort Mason Center For Arts & Culture.
SF Camerawork hosts Tricia Rainwater: The Tellings We Keep in Landmark Building A at Fort Mason Center For Arts & Culture.
SF Camerawork (SFC) hosts Tricia Rainwater: The Tellings We Keep in Landmark Building A at Fort Mason Center For Arts & Culture (FMCAC). The Tellings We Keep is an invitation residency exhibition.
The exhibition is on view Thursday to Saturday, November 20 to 22, 2025 and Monday to Wednesday, November 24 to 26, 2025. Hours on those days are 12:00 p.m. (Noon) to 6:00 p.m. The Opening Reception took place on Saturday, October 11, 2025, 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.
An “Artist Talk” with Rainwater and SFMOMA Assistant Curator Of Photography Delphine Sims takes place in the gallery on Saturday, November 21, 2025, 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. Donation requested. (Register in advance.)
The Tellings We Keep is a living archive – an offering of memory and survival. It traces what endures, what has been mourned, what hasn’t, and shines a light on what might fall through the cracks.
The Tellings We Keep unravels the complexities of separation – of being pulled from family and community by wounds older than one’s own birth. This body of work moves as prayer and song. It carries the stories others might dismiss, inviting viewers to linger in their ache, to witness what resists forgetting.
Through self-portrait photography, sculpture, and installation, Rainwater examines the entanglements of body and memory – what it means to live in a body once denied its own autonomy. Her images become vessels, carving out space for self and for home. Drawing on Choctaw ancestral designs, she dreams into being a geography remembered through childhood tellings and the echoes of land half-known, half-missed.
Tricia Rainwater is a Choctaw multimedia artist based in the San Francisco Bay Area, with roots in the Central Valley and New Mexico. Her artistic portfolio, which includes self-portraiture, sculpture, large-scale murals, and installations, has been featured at the Berkeley Center for the Arts, ICA San Francisco, MOCA Toronto, and with Muz Collective, ICA San Jose among others.
In 2022, Rainwater received a grant from the San Francisco Arts Commission to trace the Choctaw Trail of Tears. Rooted in themes of identity and grief, her work offers a perspective through the lens of a Choctaw survivor. Through her art, Tricia confronts and resists loss by revisiting sites of pain, creating spaces for personal and collective healing. CV
Thursday to Saturday, November 20 to 22, 2025 & Monday to Wednesday, November 24 to 26, 2025
Tuesday through Saturday, 12:00 p.m. (Noon) to 6:00 p.m.
SF Camerawork, Building A, Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture, 2 Marina Boulevard, San Francisco
Free
SF Camerawork hosts Tricia Rainwater: The Tellings We Keep in Landmark Building A at Fort Mason Center For Arts & Culture.
SFCamerawork.org
(415) 487-1011
info@SFCamerawork.org
Sign up today for the latest news from Fort Mason Center For Arts & Culture.
Museo Italo Americano presents “Echoes” at Fort Mason Center For Arts & Culture. This exhibit showcases photography by Sharon D’Amico, paintings by Lar Landa, and ink on paper works by Nina Temple.
Museo Italo Americano presents “Echoes” at Fort Mason Center For Arts & Culture. This exhibit showcases photography by Sharon D’Amico, paintings by Lar Landa, and ink on paper works by Nina Temple.
Experience the visual rhythms and layered perceptions of three distinct artists. Echoing through form and color, each work becomes a reverberation of memory, place, and emotion.
Sharon F. D’Amico captures compelling abstract photographs reflecting the ever-changing moods of sea and sky.
Lar Landa contributes expressive acrylic paintings that evoke the emotional undertones of color and form. Nina Temple creates delicate ink on paper works that embrace the spontaneity of fluid motion and the interplay between control and chance.
The exhibit is on view from Tuesday, June 24, 2025 through Sunday, October 12, 2025. Museo hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 12:00 p.m. (Noon) to 4:00 p.m. and Sunday, 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. (Closed on major holidays.)
Tuesday, June 24, 2025 through
Sunday, October 24, 2025
Tuesday to Saturday, 12:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Sunday, 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.
Museo Italo Americano, Building C, First Floor, Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture, 2 Marina Boulevard, San Francisco
Free On Thursdays
Museo Italo Americano presents “Echoes” at Fort Mason Center For Arts & Culture. This exhibit showcases photography by Sharon D’Amico, paintings by Lar Landa, and ink on paper works by Nina Temple.
SFMuseo.org
(415) 673-2200
info@SFMuseo.org
Sign up today for the latest news from Fort Mason Center For Arts & Culture.
Haines Gallery presents Mike Henderson: Truth, Love & Curiosity, the gallery’s 16th solo exhibition with the pioneering San Francisco Bay Area painter, musician, and filmmaker, at Fort Mason Center For Arts & Culture.
Haines Gallery presents Mike Henderson: Truth, Love & Curiosity, the gallery’s 16th solo exhibition with the pioneering San Francisco Bay Area painter, musician, and filmmaker, at Fort Mason Center For Arts & Culture. Truth, Love & Curiosity features a series of new abstract canvases.
Truth, Love & Curiosity is on view at the Haines Gallery in Building C from September 11, 2025 through October 25, 2025, Tuesday through Saturday, 10:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. The opening reception takes place on Thursday, September 11, 2025, 5:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m., followed by a live blues performance by Mike Henderson & Cabin Fever, 7:30 p.m. to 8:15 p.m. in The Store House, Landmark Building D, First Floor.
Henderson is a San Francisco Bay Area visual artist, musician, and filmmaker. Born in Marshall, MO in 1943, Henderson has been an important figure in the Northern California art scene since the 1960s. Now in his 80s, the artist continues to create works that surprise and challenge expectations. Named after the impulses that fuel Henderson’s fearlessly inventive practice, Truth, Love, and Curiosity features his gestural, highly tactile oil paintings alongside a selection of his early experimental films.
Rather than working from preconceived plans or notions, Henderson’s paintings are guided by an openness and responsiveness to the medium’s potential. As the artist explains, “Each brush stroke opens up so many new ways of seeing, working, and thinking.” Henderson uses a brush, palette knife, and even his fingers to push, pull, and scrape paint across the canvas, working and reworking each surface repeatedly as he builds layers of textural and chromatic detail. The resulting works are visually complex, materially dense, and pulsating with energy.
Truth, Love, and Curiosity focuses on a series of large-scale paintings that Henderson began in 2023. Articulating his uninhibited approach to mark-making, color, and composition, these new works are varied and singular, from the compact, irregular grids in works such as “Avalanche” (2023-25) to the kinetic orange dashes that skip across “Sparks” (2024). “In Beyond Time” (2025), Henderson balances large fields of cream and brown with the occasional patchwork of rainbow-colored striations.
Instead of describing the works, Henderson’s ambiguous, evocative, and often poetic titles offer insight into the concerns, philosophies, and influences distilled into his abstract canvases. “Here Today” (2024) – a loosely-gridded painting radiating with interlocking bands of color – elides the idiom’s second half (“Gone Tomorrow”), suggesting instead to focus mindfully on the present moment and all that it can offer. With a similarly expansive take on temporality, “The Next Blue Moon” (2025) – a work whose palette is reflected in its name – retools a turn of phrase typically used to denote a rare phenomenon, instead finding hope in the ever-present possibility of its recurrence.
Henderson’s new paintings are exhibited in dialogue with a selection of small works from the 1990s and 2000s, all on view for the first time. The artist calls these his “worry paintings,” pieces he returns to every now and then until something in them “comes into focus.” The exhibition also includes a selection of Henderson’s 16mm films from the 1970s and 1980s, many of which have been acquired and restored by the Academy Film Archive. Politically charged and often wickedly funny, these productions range from powerful “talking blues films” about Black experience to improvisational compositions and absurd musings. Shown together, the varied works in Truth, Love, and Curiosity reveal the artist’s penchant for play and experimentation, and a lifelong commitment to creative freedom.
Mike Henderson: Truth, Love, and Curiosity coincides with the second annual Nexus: SF/Bay Area Black Art Week (October 1 to 5, 2025), as well as a number of institutional exhibitions that include Henderson’s work. People Make This Place: SFAI Stories at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (July 26, 2025 to July 5, 2026) and Far Out: Northern California Art From The di Rosa Collection at the di Rosa Art Center for Contemporary Art’s new San Francisco exhibition space (August 2 to October 4, 2025) feature paintings from the 1960s and 1980s respectively. In New York, Sixties Surreal at the Whitney Museum of American Art (September 24, 2025 to January 19, 2026) includes an early film.
Mike Henderson is a pioneering African-American artist, filmmaker and musician, whose dynamic practice has spanned more than 50 years. Born and raised in Marshall, MO, he moved to the Bay Area to attend the San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) in 1965. His early, breakthrough figurative paintings from this period reveal the spirit of protest and social justice in 1960s San Francisco, as well as the vibrant community of artists and friends that would nourish his creativity for decades to come.
Henderson received his MFA from SFAI in 1970, and soon left behind his figurative style, turning his artistic vision increasingly towards abstraction. Today, he is known for abstract, highly gestural paintings that demonstrate a palpable connection to post-war abstraction and a defining instinct for improvisation. Henderson’s lived experiences, conversations he has heard, and places he has visited — those moments that “stick to your retinas” — are all conjured up in his work through texture, form, and color.
Recent exhibitions include his first museum retrospective, Before the Fire, 1965–1985 at the Manetti Shrem Museum of Art (2023); Honest to Goodness at SFAI (2019); and the group exhibition Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power 1963–1983 at the de Young Museum, San Francisco (2019-2020).
His works have been collected by such institutions as the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, CA; Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, University of California, Davis, CA; Oakland Museum of California, CA; Phoenix Art Museum, AZ; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY.
In addition to painting, Henderson is an accomplished blues guitarist and filmmaker. His experimental short films have been screened at venues around the world, including recent presentations at the New York Film Festival, NY (2017); the Gene Siskel Film Center, Chicago (2016); Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France (2016); Harvard Film Archive, Cambridge, MA (2017); and Academy Museum, Los Angeles (2023). Henderson has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship (1973), National Endowment for the Arts Artist Grants (1978, 1989), Artadia Award (2019), and the Margrit Mondavi Arts Medallion (2022), conferred by the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art at University of California–Davis.
Thursday, September 11, 2025 to
Saturday, December 14, 2025
Tuesday to Saturday, 10:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
Haines Gallery, Building C, First Floor, Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture, 2 Marina Boulevard, San Francisco
Free
In honor of Nexus SF/Bay Area Black Art Week, Haines hosts a special free artist reception, film preview screening, and Henderson’s Cabin Fever blues band on Friday, October 3, 2025, 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. (Reserve Space).
Haines Gallery presents Mike Henderson: Truth, Love & Curiosity, the gallery’s 16th solo exhibition with the pioneering San Francisco Bay Area painter, musician, and filmmaker, at Fort Mason Center For Arts & Culture.
Sign up today for the latest news from Fort Mason Center For Arts & Culture.
