{"id":392162,"date":"2026-07-09T16:10:26","date_gmt":"2026-07-09T16:10:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/392162\/"},"modified":"2026-07-09T16:10:26","modified_gmt":"2026-07-09T16:10:26","slug":"slice-of-the-pie-serves-up-bounty-of-sfs-gallery-scene-in-time-of-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/392162\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Slice of the Pie’ serves up bounty of SF’s gallery scene in time of crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"

In \u201cSlice of the Pie: Fourteen Bay Area Galleries & What Makes Them Different<\/a>\u201d at the Fraenkel Gallery through August 15, Libby Black\u2019s mixed media work, Ruth Asawa Through Line, sits near David Huffman\u2019s painting Castles Made of Sand. Adana Tillman\u2019s textile Creatives Collaboration hangs by Marie Watt\u2019s sculpture Telegraph (Kin), made up of Native American tin jingles. And Glenn Hardy Jr.\u2019s painting Barbershop is placed on the wall above Julio Cesar Morales\u2019 video Boy in Suitcase.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In what some people describe as a miniature art fair, more than 40 artists are represented at the gallery on Geary Street in downtown San Francisco.<\/p>\n

Founded in 1979 by Jeffrey Fraenkel, the venue is a heavy hitter in the world of photography, representing artists including Nan Goldin, Richard Misrach, and Hiroshi Sugimoto, and working with the estates of Diane Arbus and Peter Hujar.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Christian Whitworth, the gallery\u2019s director, says that after recent blows to the San Francisco art world\u2014such as Vanderbilt University taking over the California College of the Arts campus<\/a>, meaning the closure of the last art school in San Francisco, and several galleries including Altman Siegel and Gallery 16 shuttering\u2014 Fraenkel looked to make this year one of collaboration.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"\u2018Slice of the Pie\u2019 installation view. Courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco<\/p>\n

Crown Point Press<\/a>, which Kathan Brown founded in 1962, is the oldest gallery in \u201cSlice of the Pie.\u201d Crown Point has showed artists like Richard Diebenkorn and John Cage as well as hosting workshops by artists from Asia and Europe. Director Valerie Wade was asked to participate, and she had a conversation with Jeffrey Fraenkel, who she has known for a couple decades, about how best to represent the gallery and its long history. <\/p>\n

They decided on works by painters Robert Bechtle and Wayne Thiebaud\u2019s and an etching by Rupy C. Tut, to give a taste of artists who were foundational to Brown and her peers, along with work by Tut, a contemporary artist living in Oakland.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Wade appreciates how the exhibition puts the art of the Bay Area on display. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no one stamp that marks what the art world is like here, but it is incredibly diverse and it\u2019s all welcome and celebrated, which is what we love about San Francisco,\u201d she says. \u201cI think the exhibition highlights that fact, and I think it\u2019s the only way it could be seen is to bring a show together like this.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"\u2018Slice of the Pie\u2019 installation view. Courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco<\/p>\n

When he was looking to open his gallery in 2023 (making it the newest in the grouping), Jonathan Carver Moore of the eponymous Market Street gallery found the spirit of hospitality Wade mentioned.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of people were very receptive to me asking them questions and wanted to serve as my mentor,\u201d he says. \u201cI think asking this plethora of galleries to come together and do one big group show in the Bay shows our level of wanting to be connected to one another and to see each other succeed.\u201d<\/p>\n

For \u201cSlice of the Pie,\u201d Moore selected Hardy\u2019s painting, Tillman\u2019s textile, and a photo by Pieter Hujar that he took in the Tenderloin, where Moore\u2019s gallery is located. \u00a0<\/p>\n

This kind of range of materials and subjects allows visitors a cross-section of the talent and vibrancy of artists represented by Bay Area galleries, Whitworth says. The Fraenkel staff wanted the works to be intermixed, so those from a particular gallery are not all grouped together. To demonstrate this, he points to three works next to each other on a wall.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can start to make these associations,\u201d he says. \u201cFor example, in this case, in the kind of reoccurring motif of the birds within the Jim Campbell (Edition 25 [Birds]), the Ranu Mukherjee (osmotic guardians), and Claire Rojas (The Divide).\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Clare Rojas, \u2018The Divide,\u2019 2026. Guache on paper. Courtesy of the artist and Jessica Silverman, San Francisco. Photo: Phillip Maisel<\/p>\n

Whitworth points to a couple of works together in the next room which both depict San Francisco neighborhoods, with a photo by Janet Delaney from her South of Market series (Saturday afternoon, Howard between 3rd and 4th Streets) and Bechtle\u2019s Three Houses on Pennsylvania Avenue in Potrero Hill. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Along with the major galleries here, and institutions like the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Asian Art Museum, and the Fine Arts Museums, Whitworth says what makes the Bay Area art scene unique is the nonprofits, including Headlands Center for the Art and Southern Exposure (where artist Morales recently stepped into the role of director).\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is kind of a wealth of institutions here who are working across many media, but also I think what really separates San Francisco is a kind of underdog status and that\u2019s what makes us special,\u201d he says. \u201cWe operate on a very global level and are putting on exhibitions and signing artists who have that kind of major appeal, but there\u2019s something about the local community which makes it a little more personable and accessible.\u201d<\/p>\n

SLICE OF THE PIE: FOURTEEN BAY AREA GALLERIES & WHAT MAKES THEM DIFFERENT runs through August 15, Fraenkel Gallery, more info here.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

Besides the ones mentioned in the above article, galleries include in the show are Anthony Meier, Berggruen Gallery, Casemore Gallery, Catharine Clark Gallery, EUQUINOM Gallery, Gallery Wendi Norris, Hosfelt Gallery, Jenkins Johnson Gallery, Jessica Silverman, Micki Meng, and Rebecca Camacho Presents\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In \u201cSlice of the Pie: Fourteen Bay Area Galleries & What Makes Them Different\u201d at the Fraenkel Gallery…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":392163,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-392162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=392162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392162\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/392163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=392162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=392162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=392162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}