Visual art in 2021 explored big issues and didnt shy from controversy – SF Chronicle Datebook

Ana Teresa Fernndez stands in front of her sculpture On the Horizon during its installation and viewing party on June 20 at Ocean Beach. Photo: Jana Asenbrennerova / Special to The Chronicle

In 2021, the Bay Area returned to cultural life in museums, galleries and public art events as venues renewed in-person programming while remaining ready to adjust to new restrictions and variants.

Continuing 2020s calls for widen representation in culture, we saw the launch of the Minnesota Street Project Foundations California Black Voices Project, a grant program that featured an opening exhibition in the 1275 Minnesota St. atrium curated by Lizzetta LeFalle-Collins, as well as projects by artists Toni Scott and Leila Weefur. LGBTQ art was also given notable attention with the presentation of an original rainbow Gay Pride Flag by Gilbert Baker at the GLBT Historical Society Museum, the Queer Visions lookback at LGBTQ nightlife history at the Haight Street Art Center and a celebration of queer artist Jerome Caja at the Anglim/Trimble gallery.

San Francisco gallerist Jessica Silverman moved from her space in the Tenderloin to new digs in Chinatown, where locals Clare Rojas, Catherine Wagner, Woody De Othello and Sadie Barnette were subjects of solo shows.

In public art, Dana Kings Monumental Reckoning, featuring 350 sculptures symbolizing the first group of Africans enslaved in the United States, and Ben Davis Illuminate the Arts Lift Every Voice installation notably changed the Music Concourse at Golden Gate Park after the removal of a statue of slaveholder Francis Scott Key last year.

A thrilling, temporary public work also got an opportunity for more life. Ana Teresa Fernndezs eco-sculpture On the Horizon, consisting of 16 6-foot plastic tubes filled with seawater, was initially installed twice at Ocean Beach as a commentary on climate change and inequality. It went on to be part of the For-Site Foundations Lands End exhibition at the former Cliff House, where it is currently on view through March 2022.

And the family of San Francisco artist Ruth Asawa debuted a new online audio tour of Asawas public works, stretching from San Jose to St. Helena.

Here are some other standout moments from the year.

In September, Shimon Atties floating barge installation Night Watch felt like a comeback moment for art gatherings. The collaboration between Boxblur and the Immersive Arts Alliance featured a 20-foot LED screen affixed to the vessel traveling the San Francisco Bay for three nights with Atties video portraits of 12 refugees granted political asylum in the United States playing on a loop.

The performance coincided with Atties show Here, Not Here at the Catharine Clark Gallery. The activations around the area meaningfully combined technology and deeper questions about the asylum and refugee crisis.

The inaugural exhibition at the Akiko Yamazaki and Jerry Yang Pavilion at the Asian Art Museum was an exciting look ahead for the institution. The Tokyo-based art collectives projected digital work Continuity not only included completely original moving artwork and soundtracks, but also piped in fragrances for a truly immersive experience.

Forget the sudden rash of projected shows big in pop culture that riff on existing art like Immersive Van Gogh; for half the price, you can take in teamLabs virtual garden.

Continuity by teamLab:1-8 p.m. Thursdays; 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Fridays-Mondays. Closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Through February. $25. Asian Art Museum, 200 Larkin St., S.F. asianart.org

Discussions about fnnch and his signature honey bears reached a fever pitch this year, with fans claiming the work is meant to be uplifting and cute while critics view the work as a branding device thats a symbol of gentrification.

In response, the new street art mascot Ricky Rat rose up as a kind of anti-honey bear while activist group Gay Shame created a papier-mache honey bear being decapitated by a guillotine.

A year that included exhibitions of Joan Mitchell, Nam June Paik and San Francisco native Tauba Auerbach should be an unqualified success for the San Francisco institution. But the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is still finding its way forward after a rocky 2020, even with two shows Bay Area Walls and Close to Home: Creativity in Crisis notably focused on local artists responses to the coronavirus and ongoing social justice reckonings that hit the institution hard.

This year, the museum disbanded its volunteer Modern Art Council, closed the beloved Artists Gallery at Fort Mason and cut its celebrated film program, as well as ceasing its online publication Open Space and podcast Raw Material, citing budgetary constraints.

SFMOMA also continues to work on its Diversity Equity Inclusion plan and search for a successor to director Neal Benezra, while still facing both internal and external complaints.

Artist Judy Chicago was celebratedin four Bay Area shows in August: Judy Chicago: A Retrospective at the de Young Museum; the solo show Human Geometries at Jessica Silverman Gallery; a section of Experience Leonard Cohen at the Contemporary Jewish Museum; and in the Berkeley Art Museum-Pacific Film Archives New Time: Art and Feminisms in the 21st Century. The near-simultaneous debut of the shows will go down in local lore as Judyfest: The weekend the Bay Area went Chicago, and was a fitting acknowledgment of the underappreciated feminist creator of The Dinner Party.

However, Chicagos atmospheres installation Forever de Young in October was a polarizing event, with some applauding the work while people downwind (and residents near Golden Gate Park) asked whether clouds of colored smoke were an appropriate artistic medium during Northern Californias fire season.

Judy Chicago: A Retrospective: 9:30 a.m.-5:15 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday. Through Jan. 9. $15-$30. De Young Museum, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, S.F. 415-750-3600. deyoung.famsf.org

Judy Chicago: Cohanim: 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Thursday-Sunday. Through Jan. 2. $16 general admission. 736 Mission St., S.F. 415-655-7888. http://www.thecjm.org

New Time: Art and Feminisms in the 21st Century: 11 a.m.-7 p.m Wednesday-Sunday. Through Jan. 30. 2155 Center St., Berkeley. 510-642-0808.bampfa.org

The Afro-futurist sculptures installed in the courtyard and Rodin galleries of the Legion of Honor for Wangechi Mutu: I Am Speaking, Are You Listening? are a strong recommendation for curator Claudia Schmucklis contemporary series at the museum. The work was not only beautifully juxtaposed with the art and architecture of the venue, but also inspired visitors to ask who those spaces were designed for.

The museum nodded to history with curator Rene Dreyfus Last Supper in Pompeii: From the Table to the Grave exploring the art and lifestyle artifacts of the doomed Roman city and Color Into Line: Pastels From the Renaissance to the Present featuring 80 masterworks of the under-celebrated medium by curator Furio Rinaldi.

Color Into Line: Pastels From the Renaissance to the Present: 9:30 a.m.-5:15 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday. Through Feb. 13. $15-$30. Legion of Honor Museum, 100 34th Ave., S.F. 415-750-3600. legionofhonor.famsf.org

Patrick Kelly: Runway of Love was a giddy explosion of style, color and culture in curator Laura Camerlengos celebration of the 1980s fashion pioneer who broke many of the industrys racial barriers as a Black American fashion designer in the 1980s. The Mode Brut exhibition at the Museum of Craft and Design was another wearable high for Creativity Explored, the Mission District gallery and art center for developmentally disabled artists who explored concepts of gender, accessibility and identity through their garments.

Mode Brute: 10 a.m.- 5 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday; noon-5 p.m. Sunday. Through Jan. 23. $10. Museum of Craft and Design, 2569 Third St., S.F. 415-773-0303. sfmcd.org

Patrick Kelly: Runway of Love: 9:30 a.m.-5:15 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday. Through April 24. $15-$30. De Young Museum, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, S.F. 415-750-3600. deyoung.famsf.org

Carrie Mae Weems: Witness was a fitting first solo exhibition of the artist at Fraenkel Gallery that felt perfectly timed to ongoing cultural explorations of Black identity and womanhood.

Weems, newly represented by Fraenkel, preceded Witness by curating a separate show of Diane Arbus photographs at the gallery. Among the most resonant works in Witness were pieces from the artists Museum series, where she depicts herself clad in black staring down monuments and architectural icons of the art world.

When the Oakland Museum of California reopened in June after being closed 15 months, it debuted excitingly refreshed outdoor spaces by landscape architect Walter Hood and architect Mark Cavagnero. In August, Mothership: Voyage Into Afrofuturism delved into the movement best known for the writings of Octavia Butler and the Marvel film Black Panther. This year also saw the temporary closure of the Great Hall exhibition space after water damage caused by Bay Area rainstorms, pushing the museums Edith Heath: A Life in Clay exhibition to 2022. Also on the museums agenda: a total re-evaluation of its internal structures to better exemplify the organizations values of inclusion, equity and community.

Mothership: Voyage Into Afrofuturism: 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Friday-Sunday. Through Feb. 27. $7-$21; free for children age 12 and younger. Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak St., Oakland. museumca.org

Deborah Oropallo and Andy Rappaport, still from Uprising, 2021. 3 x 4K video projection with two-channel sound; 9:36 minutes. Edition of 8 + 2AP.

Deborah Oropallo and Andy Rappaports three-channel video installation titled Uprising helped quantify the recent removals of Confederate monuments around the country, depicting more than 200 toppled and defaced works. Watching as the wraparound screen went from vacant to populated with overlapping images of graffitied Confederate statues set to Rappaports berserk carousel soundtrack felt like a fitting final gesture to the monuments legacy.

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Visual art in 2021 explored big issues and didnt shy from controversy - SF Chronicle Datebook