Calendar

Over 400 years old, the Hamamatsu Festival is a celebration held each year in the town of Hamamatsu, Japan, from May 3 to May 5. Local towns which participate in the kite battles and float parades of the festival create cotton banners, called tenugui, with unique designs and colors that act as logos to help spectators identify the different groups competing. The library will be presenting over 100 of these tenugui cloths, along with the history of one of Japan’s most prominent events.

During the 1960s and 1970s San Francisco photographer Phiz Mezey photographed some of the significant events in the City's history.  This exhibit takes the viewer on a tour of San Francisco during this time. Highlights include the redevelopment of Western Addition, the San Francisco State Strike, personalities such as Martin Luther King Jr., Jimi Hendrix, James Baldwin and others.

Related programs:
Sunday March 3: Meet the artist Phiz Mezey, Main Library, Latino Hispanic Community Room, 1:00;
Thursday April 11 The Fillmore, Film and Discussion, Main Library, Koret, 5:30.

A photo exhibit of contemporary China, highlighting a new wave of cultural reforms bringing greater creativity in the arts, literature and design, along with innovations in technology and new safeguards for China’s cultural heritage. From the Consulate General of the People's Republic of China in San Francisco.

Works for Me: Diligence and Drudgery, with Some Distractions,  a book cover display  in  General Collections on the third floor of the Main Library.

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.

The Library's annual wit & humor exhibition examines the subject of work. Most of our lives are taken up with searching for and keeping a job; how about finding a job that we love? This exhibition draws on the Schmulowitz Collection of Wit & Humor to find the the lighter side of employment: a completely silly guide to working life. 

RELATED EXHIBITION & DISPLAY

April 1-May 31: S.S. Adams, the Edison of Practical Jokes.           Exhibition, Government Information Center, 5th Floor

April 1-May 31: Works for Me: Diligence and Drudgery, With Some Distractions. A book cover display, General Collections & Humanities, 3rd Floor

RELATED PROGRAMS

April 3: Elect to Laugh: An Evening with Political Satirist Will Durst.      Main Library, Koret Auditorium, 6:30pm

May 28: Josh Kornbluth presents Haiku Tunnel. Main Library, Koret Auditorium, 6:00pm

Thursdays at Noon (Large Screen Videos)
On the Clock: Films About Jobs and Working Life. Main Library, Koret Auditorium, 12 noon

April 4: High Fidelity
April 11: Trading Places
April 18: Up in the Air
April 25: The Associate

All films are shown with captions when possible to assist our deaf and hard of hearing. All program at the Library are free.

Images: Harold Lloyd, Master Comedian by Jeffrey Vance and Suzanne Lloyd (2002); all others courtesy San Francisco History Center, SFPL.

The San Francisco Public Library presents S.S. Adams, the Edison of Practical Jokes. This exhibit is a collection of patents from, professional prankster, Soren S. Adams. The exhibition opens April 1st and continues through May 31st, on the fifth Floor of the Main Library.

S.S. Adams went from humble origins to inventing many of the famous practical jokes including the joy buzzer, sneezing powder, and the dribble glass. Soren Sorenson Adams was a first generation immigrant from Denmark. While working for a dye company in 1904, he realized that derivative of one of the dyes caused people to sneeze. He decided to market this product as “Sneezing Powder” to use to prank unsuspecting groups of people. He patented a delivery method and started the Cachoo Sneeze Powder Company. It proved to be very popular, though controversial.

Later, he expanded his product line, inventing new gags, and renamed it to the SS Adams Company. In 1909, he invented the dribble glass, a drinking glass with minute holes in it causing water to drip on the victim. In the 1930s, he patented both the Joy Buzzer, a handheld device that imitates a shock, and a gag that involved snakes shooting out of a can. Soren S. Adams continued to invent new products through to the 1950s. 

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.

Step to Poetry is a colorful literary art installation on the Main Library's staircase written by WritersCorps youth. The youth, who range in age from 12 to 19, attend an afterschool workshop run by WritersCorps at the Main Library. The installation will be on view from May 10 through June 10, and consists of nine brief poems about popular culture.

A launch event will take place on Friday, May 17 at 6 pm, featuring a stair crawl from the first to fifth floors with WritersCorps youth performing their poems along the way. Space is limited and an RSVP to the event is required as the event takes place after library hours. Contact hello@writerscorps.org or (415) 252-2546.

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

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