From the Bay Area section of yesterday’s New York Times, a story (“Award Unites Artists, Collectors and a Museum” by Reyhan Harmanci), about the SECA Art Awards and a forthcoming show at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, illustrated by one of the works from the show, a study for “Looking at 1998 San Francisco From the Top of 1925” by Rigo 98 (now Rigo 23):
About the show. From Harmanci’s story:
They come in buses, 50 or so Bay Area contemporary art collectors, consultants and enthusiasts, to visit 30 select emerging artists every two years. For six Saturdays, the well-heeled lot traipses through small studios and edgy galleries, looking at delicate line drawings and sprawling sculptural installations alike, to meet the people they hope will become the next generation of Bay Area visual art stars.
“It’s the ultimate backstage pass to the contemporary art world,” said Marianna Stark, a San Francisco collector. “People sit enraptured when the artists and curators talk.”
The studio visits are just one part of an art tradition that has helped bring together ambitious Bay Area artists, enthusiastic collectors and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art for the past 50 years under the auspices of a museum auxiliary club of which Ms. Stark is a member, the Society for the Encouragement of Contemporary Art.
These days, the prize the society bestows, the SECA Art Award, is one of the most prestigious in Northern California, desired not so much for its cash component, which is nominal and undisclosed, as for the opportunity to show work at a notable museum.
… Beginning in December, the fifth floor of SFMOMA will be given over to SECA for an anniversary show looking back at the past half-century of winners as well as the exhibit of the most recent honorees: Colter Jacobsen, Ruth Laskey, Maurico Ancalmo and Kamau Amu Patton.
About “Looking at 1998 San Francisco from the Top of 1925”. The work (felt-tip pen, acrylic, tape, paper, and electrostatic prints) is a panoramic view of the redevelopment of South of Market area in 1998 — a view west from the roof of Timothy L. Pflueger’s 1925 Pacific Telephone Building (now the PacBell Building), SFMOMA’s immediate neighbor (140 New Montgomery St.).
About Rigo. From his Wikipedia page:
Rigo 23 (also known as Rigo <year>, for example, Rigo 95), born (1966) Ricardo Gouveia, is a Portuguese muralist, painter, and political artist residing in San Francisco, California. Although he is known particularly in the San Francisco community for having painted a number of large scale Pop Art inspired “one way” sign murals, such as the “One Tree” mural on the US-101 onramp at 10th and Bryant Streets, the “interstate route sign” shaped Innercity/Home adorning an affordable housing high rise in downtown S.F., or the “Sky/Ground” mural at 3rd and Mission Streets, the bulk of RIGO’s work more literally highlights world politics and political prisoners from the Black Panthers and the Angola Three to Mumia Abu-Jamal, whose conviction for the murder of a policeman is contested, and the American Indian Movement’s Leonard Peltier.
The “One Tree” mural:
On to the 101!
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