Calendar

California Dreaming: poems from California poets selected by Library staff.    
Join us for an exhibition of poems by California poets, lining the atrium on the third floor of the Main Library.  The 15 poems were selected by Library staff and represent some of our favorite poetry.  The exhibit will be up from April 1 (National Poetry Month) to December 1, 2013.  The poets are both well-known (Alejandro Murguia and Al Young) and new to the scene (Stewart Shaw and Monica Xu).  We're sure you will find something to love in this exhibit. 

Make your next trip to the Library a literary one with these wonderful poets.

Andy Diaz Hope and Laurel Roth are San Francisco artists who often collaborate in addition to their solo careers. Their most recent work together is a triptych of tapestries inspired by the Unicorn Tapestries and structured on the three fundamental conflicts in literature - Human vs Nature, Human vs Him/Herself, and Human vs Human. The first tapestry, Allegory of the Monoceros, illustrates the end of Darwinian natural selection and the growth of human-centric evolution. The second, Allegory of the Infinite Mortal, portrays a garden for contemplation of the scientific and philosophical structures humans have used throughout history to explore the concepts of infinity and immortality and our place therein. The third tapestry was created during their fellowship at the de Young Museum and explores how cooperation and conflict have shaped human evolution. Each tapestry began with extensive research at the San Francisco Public Library.

Born in Berkeley, California, artist and photographer Ronald Hirano, a Deaf Nisei, was "adopted" by Miss Delight Rice, who founded the Philippine School for the Deaf in 1907, when his entire family was interned to relocation camps with 120,000 Japanese-Americans during World War II.

This exhibition of his works includes photography, linoleum-engraved and designed covers of the California News (the newspaper from the California School for the Deaf), linoleum-engraved cards and pen and ink cards.

From the first obscure titles published by a feminist publishing cooperative in the 1970s through to titles published in last year, Randall Tarpey-Schwed brings to the San Francisco Public Library his unique collection of books that portray gay or lesbian parents. Here is the opportunity to view over seventy books which illustrate how this unique genre evolved despite political controversy. The exhibition also shows how society’s view of the LGBT community has changed.

Related Event: Book talk and discussion with Randall Tarpey-Schwed

Tuesday, May 14
6 PM
Main Library, Latino/Hispanic Meeting Room, Lower Level

Enjoy the artistic spirit of the Potrero Hill neighborhood at the 55th Annual Potrero Hill Artists' Exhibition, the oldest continuous artistic exhibition in San Francisco. The show will exhibit at the Potrero Library from May 4th  through July 26th.

Afro-Futurism:  Envisioning the Year 2070 and Beyond uses art to create a future for us to aspire to.  It comes from an African American perspective.  Runaway slave and heroine Harriet Tubman once said, "I freed a thousand slaves; I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves."  

Over 100 years later, writer James Baldwin praised Black revolutionaries for daring to break down barriers.  He wrote in a 1970 letter to activist Angela Davis:  "The enormous revolution in black consciousness which has occurred in your generation, my dear sister, means the beginning or the end of America. Some of us, white and Black, know how great a price has been paid to bring into existence a new consciousness, a new people, an unprecedented nation." 

What will be the Black consciousness in the year 2070, one hundred years after James Baldwin's letter?  

Curated by  Kheven LaGrone

Contributing Artist:

James Phillip Anderson

Nyame O. Brown

James M. Kennedy

Ajuan Mance

Karen Oyekanmi

Sara Marie Prada

Michael Ross

Malik Senefru

Safety First ©

Tomyé

Related Event: In commemoration of Juneteenth, an artists reception/talk will take place on Sunday, June 16, 2013

Main Library, Lower Level, Koret Auditorium, 2 PM

An exhibit of photographs that explore the history of the “north shore” of San Francisco.

Exhibit opening: Friday, May 24, 1 PM

Marina Branch Library

In this Year of the Bay, San Francisco is all about what happens in and on its eponymous  waters.  From the 150th anniversary of the Port to the arrival of the America's Cup races this summer, this exhibit celebrates all things aquatic in San Francisco history: its vibrant shipping and fishing industries, its recreational swimming and boating clubs, and other aspects of San Franciscan life as defined by the City's relationship to its watery location.

Sponsored by the San Francisco History Center

As part of Pride Month 2013, the Main Library Fisher Chidren's Center will feature an exhibit on the groundbreaking children's book:  10,000 Dresses, by local author Marcus Ewert and local illustrator Rex Ray, the first transgender book ever written for children.

A modern fairy tale about becoming the person you feel you are inside, this beautiful book from Seven Stories Press was a 2008 Lambda Literary Awards finalist, a 2009 Rainbow List Book, and a 2010 Stonewall Children's and Young Adult Literature Award Honor Book.

An exhibition exploring the history of Eureka Valley through the display of found objects from one person’s life. Discovered on the stairs outside of the Eureka Valley apartment that she occupied before passing away in 1999, Noelie Jensen’s papers, photo albums and photographs bear witness to a woman who lived her entire life in Eureka Valley. 

Her life spanned the change in the neighborhood from the working class, Irish and Swedish immigrant community of Eureka Valley of the early 20^th century to the present Gay enclave of The Castro.

Augmenting her personal photos are photos taken from the collection of the San Francisco Public library documenting the physical change of the neighborhood as it transformed during the last half of the twentieth century.  The transformation of Eureka Valley to The Castro is told through the photographs of a resident that witnessed the transformation of not only a neighborhood but a city.

This exhibit showcases artwork by various students enrolled in the SF Sheriff's Department Five Keys Charter School. These schools are high schools for adults inside county jails, at post-release sites, and at community programs throughout San Francisco. The goal is to show that the artists are more than students, more than incarcerated persons, and more than just disenfranchised people.  The Five Keys Art exhibit illustrates how this program provides a path to embracing students as whole people with dreams and aspirations, as well as re-introduces the students to the community, and the community to the students.

Despite the harsh life inside prison, art allows some of the inmates to develop skills and ideas that help them learn, grow and ultimately change. The featured work in this exhibition includes paintings, prints, and dioramas. Paintings range from landscapes to renaissance-style portraits in oils, to beautiful detailed renderings of boats and architectural images of the inside of the prison. 3D artworks include a zen garden, an imaginary city, and a San Quentin cell to scale created from posterboard, cardboard and homemade ‘clay.’

Related exhibit: Book Arts from the Arts-in-Corrections Program.
Handmade books and prints from the former statewide Arts-in-Corrections Program will be on display in the Skylight Gallery, Main Library, June 15 - September 1, 2013.
Supported by the William James Association.

This exhibit features hand made books and prints from the former statewide Arts-in-Corrections program. The artwork includes both intaglio and linocut prints and inmate poetry. 
Related exhibit: On the Line: Artwork from the San Quentin Prison Arts Project, Main Library, Jewett Gallery, June 15 - September 1.

The Hand Bookbinders of California celebrate their 41st anniversary with an exhibition of members’ hand-bound books in the Skylight Gallery, on the sixth floor of the San Francisco Public Library, Civic Center. The exhibition is presented by the Marjorie G. and Carl W. Stern Book Arts & Special Collections Center, and is on view June 18 through September 6, 2013.

Gallery talks by members of the Hand Bookbinders of California will take place on Thursdays at 2:00pm: June 27, July 18, August 1 and 15.

Don't miss these wonderful jewels of bookbinding design that inspire appreciation of the art and craft of hand bookbinding.

Image: Das Handwerk des Buchbindens in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart by Hanna Egger (1980); decorated paper from Japanese Paper “Wagami Inden” by Seikichiro-Goto (1957) . Grabhorn Collection on the History of Printing & the Development of the Book, San Francisco Public Library.