As dusk fell over a crisp downtown, a crowd of formally dressed people shuffled into a futuristic bank vault-turned-museum. Tech moguls, mayoral candidates and some of the biggest names in the Bay Area art world showed up on Montgomery Street, a street known more for banks than galleries, for the private opening of the San Francisco Museum of Contemporary Art. Open to the public on Friday.
Jello shots are served in a bank’s basement vault, ceramic sculptures and giant tapestries hang from the walls, the Bay Area’s most respected artists, gallerists, and curators float through the fifth-floor atrium, and a mayoral candidate… Daniel Lurie also joined. Gap Chairman Bob Fisher and Tipping Point Co-Founder Katie Schwab Page.
“I visited four galleries tonight, and that never happened,” Rava Thomas, the artist who recently erected a monument to Maya Angelou at the San Francisco Public Library, told The Standard. “It feels like L.A. because of the weather, and it feels like New York because of the proximity. But everyone is happy, and that’s very San Francisco.”
