Flavorpill San Francisco Events

The House of the Devil

2009-11-21T08:00:00Z

Ongoing

Daily

@ Landmark Lumiere Theatre

Ti West's homage to the trashy occult-horror films of the early '80s requires something rarely asked of contemporary horror-film audiences: patience. With period-perfect production design and a brilliant sense of timing, West slowly ratchets up the suspense in this tidy amalgam of familiar plot elements (a plucky coed takes a babysitting gig in a creepy house during a lunar eclipse; Satanic mayhem ensues) to nearly unbearable levels. Although you can see everything coming from several miles off (the title says it all), and even if the film can't fully deliver on the devilish climax it so skillfully builds up to, The House of the Devil is still a thing of beauty — and terror.

Outdoor Exploratorium

2009-11-21T08:00:00Z

Ongoing

Daily

@ Fort Mason Center

Since 1969, the Exploratorium has merged science and fun with its hands-on collection; now, it brings that curatorial savvy outdoors, with 20 interactive exhibits that investigate everything from water and wind to sound and light. Bridge Thermometer demonstrates how the Golden Gate can gauge temperature; Tasting the Tides creates a bayside water fountain; and Corrosion Wedge reveals the secret life of historic waterfront buildings. The exhibit has been two years in the making, and it's guaranteed to teach you a thing or two about the phenomena right before your eyes.

Mark Baugh-Sasaki: Adaptations

2009-11-21T08:00:00Z

Opens Friday July 24 (6–7:30pm)

Ongoing

Daily

@ Hayes Valley Park

The work of emerging sculptor Mark Baugh-Sasaki reflects both his San Francisco upbringing (including an adolescence spent mountain biking through the Presidio) and his education at Carnegie Mellon, nestled near the industrial detritus of the Rust Belt. Baugh-Saski's large-scale pieces combine organic and man-made materials, pointedly illustrating the fragile and contentious relationship between the natural world and manufactured matter. Adaptations, Baugh-Saski's first public art piece, is comprised of hundreds of branches — salvaged from pruned and felled trees in local parks and yards — sinuously flowing in and out of the ground and winding towards the sky, barely restrained by its steel exoskeleton.

CRUDE

2009-11-21T08:00:00Z

Ongoing

Daily

@ Landmark Lumiere Theatre

After following Metallica through group therapy in his last film, Some Kind of Monster, Joe Berlinger is back in top form with his new documentary, CRUDE, which chronicles the epic legal battle to hold Chevron accountable for its systematic contamination of the Equadorian Amazon — an environmental tragedy experts agree is one of the worst cases of oil-related contamination on Earth. Featuring everyone from Chevron executives to Trudie Styler and Sting, the story keeps you pinned as 30,000 Amazon natives face down the fifth largest corporation in the world. If you feel inspired after watching (which you will), check out the website for volunteer opportunities.

Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs

2009-11-21T17:00:00Z

June 27 – Mar 28, 2010

Daily (9am–9pm)

@ de Young Museum

"Wonderful things." So said Howard Carter when the archaeologist was asked what he saw upon peeking into the just-opened tomb of boy-king Tutankhamun. Almost a century later and many world tours over, King Tut's wonderful things — enough beautifully crafted, jewel-encrusted, and gilded loot to last a dynastic ruler through the afterlife and beyond —still hold their allure. Perhaps, in these tough economic times, nothing seems simultaneously more fantastically alien, or more apropos a reminder of our last gilded age, than the glittering horde on display at the de Young. Get ready to gawk and awe.

Fall Saturday Camp

2009-11-21T17:00:00Z

Saturday Nov 21 (9am–2pm)

@ Exploratorium

Sign up now for our newest Day Camp experience, which takes place on three alternate Saturdays this Fall: October 24, November 7, and November 21! Each Saturday session for 5-6 or 7-10 year-olds features project building, science experiments, art projects, group games, and lunchtime by the Bay, and offers exploration time in the museum before we open to the public.

For those ages 7 and up, you can extend the fun by registering the whole family for the cow’s eye dissection workshop immediately following camp on November 21.

Punk Passage: San Francisco First Wave Punk 1977-1981

2009-11-21T18:00:00Z

Sep 12 – Dec 6

Mondays (10–6pm)

Tuesdays–Thursdays (9am–8pm)

Fridays (noon–6pm)

Saturdays (10am–6pm)

Sundays (noon–5pm)

@ San Francisco Public Library

The Sex Pistols may have imploded after their notorious final show at SF's now-defunct Winterland Ballroom, but the city's own punk scene couldn't care less that the music's most tabloid-ready cover boys had called it quits. There was enough happening locally — thanks to bands such as Crime, the Tubes, the Avengers, Chrome, and the Dead Kennedys — and photographer Ruby Ray, working for V. Vale's Search and Destroy zine, was there to capture it all. Ray's dynamic black-and-white shots, along with assorted posters and printed ephemera from the SFPL's own collection, tell the story of a wilder, woollier San Francisco that now lives on in the music, and in pictures like hers.

Emerald Cities: Arts of Siam & Burma

2009-11-21T18:00:00Z

Oct 23 – Jan 10, 2010

Daily (10am–5pm)

@ Asian Art Museum

In the 19th-century Siam and Burma—two neighboring kingdoms in Southeast Asia—were renowned for their golden-roofed temples, lush gardens, and handsomely adorned palaces.

Emerald Cities is the first major exhibition in the West to explore the rich but little known arts of Siam and Burma from this period. Many of the 140 stunning artworks—including gilded ritual vessels, mother-of-pearl inlaid furniture, colorful paintings, manuscripts, exquisite textiles, delicate ceramics, and more—were recently acquired by the museum from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and are on display for the first time.

The Asian Art Museum is the exclusive venue for this exhibition.

Richard Avedon: Photographs 1946-2004

2009-11-21T18:00:00Z

July 11 – Nov 29

Mondays–Tuesdays (10am–5:45pm)

Thursdays (10am–8:45pm)

Fridays–Sundays (10am–5:45pm)

@ SFMOMA

Marilyn Monroe caught in a moment of intense vulnerability. The line of a model's Dior gown mirrored in the curves of the elephants around her. A beekeeper covered in his buzzing flock. These are some of the countless decisive moments caught by Richard Avedon's camera. SFMOMA's huge retrospective presents the largest American survey of Avedon's work to date, from his early, revolutionary fashion work at Harper's Bazaar and the countless '60s portraits of political and cultural movers and shakers, to his magnum opus documenting America's surreal frontier, In the American West, and his final portraits for The New Yorker. Whether photographing pop royalty, politicians, or ranch hands, Avedon followed Aleister Crowley's dictum that "every man, every woman, is a star."

Holly Andres: Sparrow Lane

2009-11-21T18:30:00Z

Nov 5 – Dec 24

Tuesdays–Fridays (10:30am–5:30pm)

Saturdays (10:30am)

@ Robert Koch Gallery

Holly Andres reveals only part of the mysterious story behind the lush and saturated images that make up Sparrow Lane. Calling to mind both Nancy Drew cover art and traditions of narrative photography, these theatrically staged and richly metaphorical images allude to the the loss of innocence and the search for self that transpires in the transition from adolescence to womanhood. Andres' young heroines explore domestic spaces and wooded landscapes, forever searching for clues to a mystery that lies just beyond the edge of the frame.

Passionate Struggle: Dynamics of San Francisco's GLBT History

2009-11-21T19:00:00Z

Dec 7, 2008 – Dec 10

Daily (11am–7pm)

@ 499 Castro St

One of the many transformations that occurs in Gus van Sant's Milk is that of the Castro from a sleepy, working-class Irish neighborhood into an epicenter of post-Stonewall gay life. But, as the GLBT Historical Society's exhibit Passionate Struggle reminds us, the fluorescence of the Castro in the '70s was but one chapter of San Francisco's very queer past. Fittingly housed at the address of Harvey Milk's old camera shop, Passionate Struggle presents many of the Society's rarely exhibited holdings through four lenses: People, Politics, Places, and Pleasures. From intimate snapshots to protest placards, and from pulp-fiction covers to the suit Milk was shot in, the objects in Passionate Struggle not only tell the stories of SF's GLBT folk, but that of the city, as well.

Ari Marcopoulos: Within Arm's Reach

2009-11-21T19:00:00Z

Sep 23 – Feb 7, 2010

Wednesdays–Sundays (11am–5pm)

@ Berkeley Art Museum

In his younger years, Amsterdam-born photographer Ari Marcopoulos worked as studio assistant to Andy Warhol and Irving Penn, and their influence shines through in his imagery's edginess, its elegance, and in the gift for intimate portraiture. Marcopoulos has made a name for himself documenting insular tribes and scenes: the '80s downtown art circles of Basquiat, Haring, and Mapplethorpe; musical groups such as the Beastie Boys; daredevil skaters and surfboarders; and most recently the domestic tribe of family (his own). In his first retrospective, Marcopoulos presents over 90 prints from his 30-year career.

Ara Peterson: Turns Into Stone

2009-11-21T19:00:00Z

Nov 6 – Dec 18

Wednesdays–Saturdays (11am–6pm)

@ Ratio 3

Ara Peterson brings together two bodies of work that both draw on memory and optical illusion to create the colorfully complex and layered pieces in Turns to Stone. The first, a three-year collaboration with his father, investigates patterns important in their family ancestry through the creation of a series of backgammon boards whose playing fields have been transformed into Op Art canvases. The second group of sculptures is the result of years of experimentation in organization of space and relief pattern. Throughout the exhibition, the piece's bright, contrasting colors create optical illusions of spatial complexity so that you never quite know what you're looking at.

There's a Mystery There: Sendak on Sendak

2009-11-21T19:00:00Z

Sep 8 – Jan 19, 2010

Mondays–Tuesdays (11am–5pm)

Thursdays (1–8pm)

Fridays–Sundays (11am–5pm)

@ Contemporary Jewish Museum

With everyone atwitter about the October release of the Dave Eggers-penned, Spike Jonze-helmed, and Arcade Fire-filled adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are, there is bound to be a new wave of Maurice Sendak mania in the coming weeks. So, the Contemporary Jewish Museum's retrospective of Sendak's story-book career couldn't be timelier. Through a series of revealing interviews and a major mounting of original drawings, There's a Mystery Here traces the sober and challenging undercurrents of Sendak's canon — isolation, guileful intolerance, the power of memory and fantasy to overcome all — to his upbringing as the child of poor Jewish immigrants from pre-Holocaust Poland.

Exhibition: Everyday Miracles (Extended), Phase 2

2009-11-21T19:00:00Z

Nov 12 – Jan 30, 2010

Tuesdays–Saturdays (11am–6pm)

@ San Francisco Art Institute

Opening reception for Phase 2: November 12, 2009, 5:30–7:30pm

Curated by SFAI’s Director of Exhibitions and Public Programs Hou Hanru, in collaboration with Clara Kim at REDCAT in Los Angeles, the group exhibition Everyday Miracles (Extended)—on view in three phases at SFAI’s Walter and McBean Galleries and at REDCAT in Los Angeles—elaborates on Hou’s original project, Everyday Miracles, which he curated for the Chinese Pavilion at the 2007 Venice Biennial and which featured four Chinese women artists from different generations. Everyday Miracles (Extended) presents women artists from across Asia and seeks to expand the dialogue on feminism, Asia, and the everyday that has emerged as a new context for creating the extraordinary in art.

Phase 2 on view: November 13, 2009–January 30, 2010
Artists: Hamra Abbas, Ringo Bunoan, and Chen Hui-chiao

For full details about the entire exhibition, please go to www.sfai.edu/current.

Walter and McBean Galleries
800 Chestnut Street campus
Tuesdays–Saturdays, 11:00am–6:00pm
Free and open to the public