Week of 05.18.25
Thing one: Wendel A. White: “Schools for the Colored” & “Manifest”
ONGOING: April 5 – May 31, 2025
To state the obvious, I love looking at art, but seldom does it make me weep. This exhibition did. The works, while simplistic in chosen objects, had such a strong impact that I found myself weeping, only to find out after my reaction the intent of the work. It is timely, impactful, and important. HIGHLY RECOMMEND!
From the gallery:
“Schools for the Colored, carefully selected from a larger portfolio of the same name, looks at the physical structures – both standing and demolished – of segregated schools of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. In these black and white prints, the buildings that still exist are photographically represented, and the schools that have been destroyed are depicted by black silhouettes of those structures, nodding to the way space can hold invisible memories of the past. While the former schools and silhouettes are sharply in focus, the surrounding landscape is masked as if faded, a reference to W. E. B. DuBois’ literary metaphor (from The Souls of Black Folk) of the veil as a social barrier.”
On view our south gallery is a selection from White’s ongoing project Manifest. Here we see archival objects from various public collections throughout the U.S. photographed in rich color on uniformly black backgrounds. The objects included are examinations of material culture – books, daguerreotypes, lunchboxes, tape recorders. Some of these items hold great significance, while others are simply quotidian representations of daily life in the history of the African American community. While the selections for this exhibition shift focus to the 20th century, the histories of slavery, abolition, and the U.S. Civil War are a few of the narratives present in the project at large. White maintains a keen interest in the residual power of the past to inhabit material remains, and the ability of objects to transcend lives, centuries, and millennia, suggesting a remarkable mechanism for folding time, bringing the past and the present into a shared space that is uniquely suited to artistic exploration.”
LOCATION: Rena Bransten Gallery, Minnesota Street Project, 1275 Minnesota Street, San Francisco, CA 94107 (2nd Floor)
HOURS: Tues – Sat // 11am – 5pm
Clare Rojas, Walking in rainbow rain, 2021. Oil on linen canvas, 56 x 70 in.
Photograph by Gary Sexton
Thing TWO: About Place: Bay Area Artists from the Svane Gift
ONGOING: August 10, 2024 – November 30, 2025
This exhibition is the second in a series highlighting contemporary Bay Area artists in our collection. The installation explores how artists relate to their environments through place: place as the physical land, place as heritage, place as the imaginary, and place as belonging.
Several artists examine climate change and its local impact. In Saif Azzuz’s Lo’op’ (It burns) (2021), he draws the color palette from maps of the 2021 droughts and fires in California. Other artists use found materials not only to address ecological issues but also to add layers of meaning, such as in Guillermo Galindo’s Listo (Ready to Go) (2015), made from a broken bicycle and chair he found along the US-Mexico border. And others play with figure and ground: Clare Rojas’s Walking in Rainbow Rain (2021) is a meditation on disappearing into one’s environment. The drab cityscape is brightened by the rain’s rainbow palette, which also alludes to the history of the LGBTQ+ movement in San Francisco. The works on display, exploring themes of belonging, ecological stewardship, and social justice, are drawn from the 2022 Svane Family Foundation gift of 42 works by more than 30 local artists.
LOCATION: de Young, Golden Gate Park, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, San Francisco, CA 94118
HOURS: Tuesday – Sunday 9:30 am – 5:15 pm
thing three: Genevieve Cohn - "In Defense of Tenderness"
May 3 - 31, 2025
Hashimoto Contemporary is pleased to present In Defense of Tenderness by Boston-based artist Genevieve Cohn. The exhibition marks Cohn's second solo exhibition at Hashimoto Contemporary.
Hashimoto Contemporary is pleased to present In Defense of Tenderness, a solo exhibition by Boston-based artist Genevieve Cohn. Each of her vibrant paintings are phrases in a continuous narrative filled with mythic, playful women weaving together an imagined history and future.
The communities of women that inhabit Cohn’s paintings are at once folkloric and grounded in reality, taking on a sense of magical realism. The chromatic figures tend the land around them and one another to form an imagined world informed by The Women’s Land Army, female separatist communities, fairy tales, and literary fiction.
Cohn writes of the recent paintings, “Figures move through layered environments, often engaged in building fences, planting gardens, and crafting protective structures. In the periphery —glimpses of unease that echo the instability of our current moment. Yet the focus remains on the figures: how they continue, how they hold, how they build.” Her paintings allow the viewer to experience the tenderness and care shown amongst the figures from a place of safety and protection.
HASHIMOTO CONTEMPORARY, Minnesota Street Project, 1275 Minnesota Street, San Francisco, CA 94107
HOURS: Tuesday - Saturday / 10am - 6pm
Genevieve Cohn
Held by What We Hold, 2025
acrylic on canvas
72 x 60 in
