Eight bridges connect the San Francisco Bay, so it is an apt name for a gallery platform that brings the Bay Area art world together.

Our mission is to maintain a vibrant gallery scene, despite restrictions on travel, celebrations and other larger gatherings. We want to support our artists by informing and entertaining curators, collectors and critics with potent online exhibitions of their work.

On the first Thursday of every month, we will launch 8 shows of artists relevant to the Bay Area. They may be working in this place, long considered an epicenter of change, or deeply engaged in the conversations the Bay Area holds dear, whether it’s related to technology, the environment, social justice or sexual identity, to name a few. In addition, each month will highlight the crucial work of a Bay Area non-profit arts organization.

Founding Committee

Claudia Altman-Siegel, Kelly Huang, Sophia Kinell, Micki Meng, Daphne Palmer, Ratio 3, Sarah Wendell Sherrill, Jessica Silverman, and Elizabeth Sullivan

Ambassador Committee

Sayre Batton & Maja Thomas, Joachim & Nancy Bechtle, Matt Bernstein, Sabrina Buell, Wayee Chu & Ethan Beard, Natasha Boas, Douglas Durkin, Carla Emil, Matt & Jessica Farron, Lauren Ford, Ali Gass, Stanlee Gatti, Brook Hartzell & Tad Freese, Pamela & David Hornik, Katie & Matt Paige, Putter Pence, Becca Prowda & Daniel Lurie, Deborah Rappaport, Komal Shah & Gaurav Garg, Laura Sweeney, The Battery, Robin Wright, Sonya Yu & Zack Lara

Sponsors

Lobus, The Space Program

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Today

San José Museum of Art – 2021 Gala + Auction

sjmusart.org/2021Gala

Don't miss San José Museum of Art’s 2021 Gala + Auction, a virtual celebration of art and philanthropy to raise critical funds for SJMA on Saturday, September 18 at 6pm PDT.

Fraenkel Gallery – Paris Photo

Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to return to Paris Photo with works by Robert Adams, Diane Arbus, Bernd & Hilla Becher, Sophie Calle, Lee Friedlander, Nan Goldin, Martine Gutierrez, John Gutmann, Peter Hujar, Christian Marclay, Wardell Milan, Richard Misrach, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Carrie Mae Weems, and others.

Marrow Gallery – Two Moons in Sagittarius

Marrow Gallery 548 Irving Street, San Francisco, CA

Marrow Gallery presents Two Moons in Sagittarius, featuring the work of Tahiti Pehrson, Mercy Hawkins and Lindsay Stripling. As 2021 comes to a close, we look back on the year and invite the universe to guide us into a brighter future. The New Moon that opens December is a truth seeker. The three artists in this exhibition offer perspectives which seek to reveal the hidden and explore the unknown: Tahiti Pehrson’s representation of the mysterious workings of the wider universe, are represented in finely crafted hand cut paper mathematical forms; Mercy Hawkins, whose sympatico understanding of natural and man made environments reaches beyond symbolic language to create a deeper understand of the natural world; and finally, the folk art wisdom of Lindsay Stripling, presenting contemporary fables, imagery and human truths.

Gray Loft Gallery – Yellow!

Gray Loft Gallery 2889 Ford Street,#32, third floor, Oakland, CA

Gray Loft Gallery is pleased to present Yellow! – a group photography show selected by Ann Jastrab, executive director of the Center for Photographic Arts in Carmel, CA. The exhibit features the work of Bay Area photographers and includes images from a wide array of traditional and alternative photographic processes – including pinhole photography, images made with Polaroid and plastic cameras, tin-types, and other film-based works.

free

Mimi Plumb: The White Sky – Artist Reception

Robert Koch Gallery 49 Geary Street, 5th Floor, San Francisco, CA

Robert Koch Gallery presents Mimi Plumb: The White Sky, the gallery’s second exhibition by American photographer Mimi Plumb. Plumb's black and white photographs of 1970s life in her hometown Walnut Creek and surrounding Bay Area expound evocatively on the peculiar banality of Californian suburban sprawl, touching on candid narratives of youthful summertime wanderlust. The resulting eerily compelling images lead the viewer through tangential story lines that are mysterious yet familiar.

Johansson Projects at Untitled Art

Johansson Projects will be showing works by gallery artists at Untitled Art Miami, Booth #A54, ocean side

Eleanor Harwood Gallery at Untitled Art Miami

Ocean Drive and 12th Street Ocean Drive and 12th Street, Miami Beach, FL

Please join us at Untitled in Miami Beach. We are exhibiting three new works by Kira Dominguez Hultgren and three works from Terri Loewenthal's recent Havasu Falls exhibit.

Lena Wolff: A Language for the Commons

We are pleased to invite you to A Language For The Commons, Lena Wolff's second solo exhibition with the Sarah Shepard Gallery. Wolff's new work links the iconography of American quilts with symbols for democracy, motifs from nature, and the universe at large.

McEvoy Foundation for the Arts – Memories to Light

McEvoy Arts commissions local composers Danny Clay and Theresa Wong to compose and perform an experimental score for Memories to Light, a film by documentary filmmaker Chet Canlas. The film creates a honeycomb lens of Asian America by interweaving home movies from the collection of the Center for Asian American Media (CAAM) with archival images from the Manilatown Heritage Foundation. This panoramic juxtaposition of sight and sound is the first performance in the McEvoy Arts galleries since February 2020.

Root Division Makes: Studio Artist Exhibit

Join us this December for RD Makes: Studio Artist Exhibition & Winter Pop-Up Shop. This annual exhibition features Root Division Studio Artists in a dynamic survey exhibition highlighting the variety of work being created in the Studio Artist program at Root Division. Come peruse the exhibition and all the artist-made goods, gifts, and creations at […]

Jason Trotter: Off-Color

Marin Country Mart 2245 Larkspur Landing Circle Larkspur, CA 94939 Marin Country Mart 2245 Larkspur Landing, Larkspur, CA 94939, CA

Sarah Shepard Gallery is pleased to present Off-Color by Los Angeles-based contemporary artist Jason Trotter. Jason Trotter is an American artist known for his bold geometric abstracts rendered in acrylics using a hard-edge technique. For this group of 9 new paintings,Trotter intuitively explored a muted color palette of elemental earth tones in brick, gold, ocean blue and sage. On view through the holidays.

High Plains | Rachelle Bussières, Blaise Rosenthal, Andy Vogt

Johansson Projects 2300 Telegraph Avenue, Oakland, CA

Johansson Projects presents High Plains, a three-person exhibition featuring the work of Rachelle Bussières, Blaise Rosenthal and Andy Vogt. Ranging in mediums from exposures on gelatin silver photo paper, to reclaimed wood lath constructions, and layered painting and drawing on canvas, these three artists use unique vocabularies to compose reflections of individual experience. Their practices share in the use of time and transmutation, each performing acts of alchemy in the studio that shift their humble materials in the direction of the sublime. The exhibition opens January 8 and will run through February 26, 2022.

Nancy Toomey Fine Art – Artist Reception for Matthew Picton

Nancy Toomey Fine Art 1275 Minnesota Street, San Francisco, CA

Nancy Toomey Fine Art is pleased to announce an exhibition of works by Matthew Picton titled The Age of Kali, on view from January 5 to February 26, 2022. The gallery is located inside San Francisco’s Minnesota Street Project, 1275 Minnesota Street. Gallery hours are Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays, 12pm to 4pm, and by appointment–please contact nancy@nancytoomeyfineart.com or 415-307-9038.

The public is invited to meet artist Matthew Picton at the gallery on Saturday, January 8, from 4pm to 6pm.

TINT Gallery – Alexandra Cicorschi “No Middle Ground”

TINT Gallery 149 Gough Street, San Francisco, CA

TINT Gallery is pleased to announce Alexandra Cicorschi’s solo exhibition, “No Middle Ground.” Cicorschi creates artwork out of salvaged wood, collected from construction sites and discarded furniture around the Bay Area. The process of recycling lies at the base of her art practice, both as a plea for sustainability as well as her personal belief in the importance of renewal through recirculation.

K. Imperial Fine Art – “Living in Color” Group Show Opening Reception

K. Imperial Fine Art is excited to present "Living in Color," a group exhibition focusing on the impact of color as it enriches and enhances daily life. Vibrant hues play a defining role in the featured works by Steven Alexander, Catherine Howe, Andrea Myers, and Vicki Sher. The exhibition is on view by appointment from January 5 to 31, 2022, with an opening reception on January 15, from 4 pm to 6 pm. More: https://bit.ly/3FmikLA

Karl Klingbiel | Every Force Evolves a Form

Maybaum Gallery 49 Geary Street, Suite 416, San Francisco, CA

Presenting Karl Klingbiel's second solo show with Maybaum Gallery.
On view January 4 - February 28.

Romer Young Gallery – Sequence Opening Reception

Romer Young Gallery 1240 22nd St, San Francisco, CA

Romer Young Gallery is pleased to announce its fifth solo exhibition with New York artist Elise Ferguson, Sequence. Using pattern and color, along with a range of process-driven approaches and modern materials, Ferguson creates works based on mathematical puzzles and geometric variations that land somewhere at the intersection of painting, sculpture and printmaking. The results are beautiful works that reflect the artist's intuitive use of geometry and her reverence for the purposely imperfect. There will be an opening reception on Saturday, January 22nd, from 1 to 4pm. The exhibition will be on view from January 22 - March 12, 2022.

XX @ XV: 15th Anniversary Book Launch Celebration

Mercury 20 Gallery 475 25th St., Oakland, CA

Please join us on Saturday, January 29th from 2:30-5pm for the launch of our catalog, Mercury 20 Gallery at XV: 15 Years of Art and Community. Published on the occasion of the gallery's fifteenth anniversary, the book includes an essay by Bay Area writer, curator and educator, Glen Helfand. Twenty-three current member artists are featured in the […]

Free

Euqinom Gallery – Mona Kuhn Book Signing

EUQINOM Gallery, 1295 Alabama Street, San Francisco, CA 94110 1295 Alabama Street, San Francisco, CA

Euqinom Gallery will be hosting a book signing on Saturday January 29th from 3-5pm with Mona Kuhn, who will be signing copies of her new retrospective monograph, Mona Kuhn: Works, published by Thames & Hudson. Texts by Rebecca Morse, Simon Baker, Darius Himes, Chris Littlewood, and an interview with Elizabeth Avedon.

Marrow Gallery – Stephanie Robison “Close Contact”

Marrow Gallery 548 Irving Street, San Francisco, CA

Marrow Gallery presents Close Contact, the first solo exhibition from Stephanie Robison. The Oakland based artist works in marble and hand felted wool, The dichotomy of the two materials is intentional, its purpose and significance at odds in its awkwardness. The materials allow a certain freedom, creating work that is intentional and purposeful in its happenstance. The exhibition runs February 2 - March 5th, 2022.

Liam Everett in conversation with Natasha Boas

Liam Everett discusses his exhibition of new paintings, "ticklepenny lemon phosphate," with curator, writer, and critic Natasha Boas.

Liam Everett lives and works in Sebastopol, CA. Throughout his oeuvre, the artist has established the studio as a site of both investigation and rehearsal. His practice is mediated by a set of open-ended, continually shifting questions as to the influence of gesture, material, obstruction, and the environment upon his work. Rather than offering definitive answers, however, Everett’s paintings further elaborate these questions and act as record of the material encounters that occur within them.

The California Studio – Jennifer Packer Artist Talk

Wright Hall Wright Hall, 210 Hutchison Dr, Davic, CA

Jennifer Packer is a painter known for her portraits, still lives and interior scenes. Often created in monochrome, her work explores different ways of approaching identity in representation. Packer has been recognized by the American Academy of Arts and Letters and received the Nancy B. Negley Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome. Her work is currently featured in solo exhibitions at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Gray Loft Gallery – 10th Anniversary Exhibit

Gray Loft Gallery 2889 Ford Street,#32, third floor, Oakland, CA

The 10th Anniversary Love Show will celebrate the work of Bay Area artists featuring photography, paintings hand-blown glass and sculpture that explore the universal language of love. This is a visual dialogue about love in many interpretations - from literal depictions, allegory, and metaphors. Many of the pieces were created specifically for the show.
The gallery will also have handmade jewelry on display and artesian chocolates made exclusively for the show.

Maybaum Gallery – Erin Eastabrooks | Infinite Expanse

Maybaum Gallery 49 Geary Street, Suite 416, San Francisco, CA

Erin Eastabrooks is a multidisciplinary, self-taught artist living and working in the Bay Area. She draws inspiration from the bright colors, sun-drenched exteriors and psychedelic imagery of California and the West Coast. Her unique juxtaposition and play of differing colors, textures and patterns are influenced by her mother’s quilting and sewing practice. Instead of an impressionistic recreation of her chosen scenes, her paintings are drawn from her memory, never an exact copy but an accumulation of images from her mind’s eye. She looks to translate our textural world into an intricate pastel and neon mosaic, bringing her material experimentations and surreal imagery to the canvas.

UC Davis Department of Art and Art History – Simphiwe Ndzube Artist Talk

Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Musem of Art 254 Old Davis Rd, Davis, CA

Simphiwe Ndzube is a painter and sculptor whose uses flamboyant color and theatrical space to tell a story of the Black experience in post-apartheid South Africa. His work was most recently the subject of a 2021 exhibition “Simphiwe Ndzube, Oracles of the Pink Universe” at the Denver Art Museum. Other major shows include “Like the Snake that Fed the Chameleon” (Nicodim Gallery, LA, 2021); “The Fantastic Ride to Gwadana” (Stevenson Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa, 2020, a solo exhibit); and ”Where Water Comes Together With Other Water,” The 15th Lyon Biennale (Lyon, France, 2019). His work is collected by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Denver Art Museum; Musée d’art Contemporain de Lyon, France; Iziko South African National Gallery, South Africa; Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, South Africa; and many others. Ndzube has held residencies at the Dalton Warehouse Studios, South Central, LA (2018) and Greatmore Studios, Woodstock Cape Town (2016), and was awarded the Culture Creators ‘Innovators & Leaders’ Award in Art (2019).

Johansson Projects – Aili Schmeltz and Katy Stone: Receiver

The works of Aili Schmeltz and Katy Stone move between individual and collective experience, tying personal stories to shared landscape. The formal proximity of these two artists is loosely apparent, as each focuses on the tools of color and material to reexamine spatial relationships. Aili employs the narrative mediums of painted canvas, fabric dye, and thread, while Katy uses laser cut aluminum or acrylic, in concert with sculptural relief and shadow. Each artist in her investigation intimately communicates an awareness of connection to nature and our place in it.

From Moment to Movement: A Conversation on Art, Protest and Public Engagement

Taking inspiration from the exhibition “From Moment to Movement: Picturing Protest in the Kramlich Collection,” on view at the Manetti Shrem Museum, this virtual conversation addresses the vital role of artists and art in the public sphere today and the challenges of critical and creative interventions in a media-saturated culture. The panel includes Susie Kantor, […]

Curating Black Rage and Black Utopias: Mike Henderson: Before the Fire, 1965-1985

Join Manetti Shrem Museum Scholar-in-Residence Sampada Aranke and Curator at Large Dan Nadel and the Graduate Group in Cultural Studies for an overview of the exhibition, with an emphasis on the curators’ research and collaboration.

Opening January 2023 at the Manetti Shrem Museum, “Mike Henderson: Before the Fire, 1965-1985” features paintings and films by the UC Davis professor emeritus. These works depict scenes of antiblack violence, heteromasculinity and abject social conditions as well as utopian visions, questions of self-making and formal narrative studies of painting and film. Henderson’s ambidextrous practice examines and offers new ideas about Black life in the visual languages of protest, Afro-futurism and surrealism, challenging the protocols and propriety of art-making in the 20th century.

UC Davis Department of Art and Art History – Connie Butler Curator Talk

Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Musem of Art 254 Old Davis Rd, Davis, CA

Connie Butler is the chief curator at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles where she has organized numerous exhibitions including “Lari Pittman: Declaration of Independence” (2019), “Marisa Merz: The Sky Is a Great Space” (2017), and the biennial of Los Angeles artists “Made in LA” (2014). Butler has long been interested in feminism and art, curating numerous show on women artists. When she was the Robert Lehman Foundation Chief Curator of Drawings at MOMA (2006-2013), she co-curated ”Lygia Clark: The Abandonment of Art, 1948-1988,” the first major Lygia Clark retrospective in the United States (2014). She organized the groundbreaking survey “WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution” (2007) at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles where she was curator from 1996-2006. In 2020, Butler received a fellowship from The Center for Curatorial Leadership as well as the Bard College Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence.

Submit an Event

Dear galleries,

Please fill out this form with events you want to see included on the 8-bridges website calendar. All events must be submitted up to one week before the launch.

Thank you!