1871

SAN FRANCISCO ART ASSOCIATION (SFAA) is founded, open to artists for monthly dues of $1.

1947

SIDNEY PETERSONteaches the first film course at the school.

1952Faculty member MINOR WHITE becomes the first editor of Aperture magazine, with faculty member DOROTHEA LANGE’s work featured on the first cover.

1976

Activist, philosopher, and writer ANGELA DAVIS joins the faculty to teach aesthetics.

1966 Sculptor and conceptual artist BRUCE NAUMAN begins teaching at SFAI.

1968 Alumni RUTH-MARION BARUCH and PIRKLE JONES document the early days of the Black Panther Party in Northern California; the photographs are exhib-ited at the de Young Museum.

1968

Student PAUL McCARTHY begins work on a series of performances called Instructions.

1885

A group of women artists—in response to the men-only Spring Shows sponsored annually by SFAA — hold

the FIRST WOMEN-ONLY EXHIBITION.

1931 Alumnus HENRY KIYAMA publishes The Four Immigrants Manga, the first

graphic novel published in the US.

1956 William T. Wiley, Robert Hudson,

and William Allen arrive. Along with other students— Manuel Neri,

Bill Brown, Arlo Acton, Joan Brown, Alvin Light, Bill Geis, and Carlos Villa—

they become the core of the BAY AREA FUNK art movement.

1931 Mexican muralist

DIEGO RIVERA paints The Making of a Fresco

Showing the Building of a City in the school’s gallery.

1926 The school moves to its current campus at 800 CHESTNUT STREET in a new building designed by Bakewell and Brown, architects of City Hall and Coit Tower.

1945

ANSEL ADAMS founds the FIRST FINE ART PHOTOGRAPHY DEPARTMENT. Faculty include Dorothea Lange, Imogen Cunningham, Minor White, Edward Weston, and Lisette Model.

1945 DOUGLAS G. MACAGY becomes director. He hires Clyfford Still, Hassel Smith, David Park, Elmer Bischoff, and Richard Diebenkorn, and invites New York artists Mark Rothko and Ad Reinhardt to teach summer sessions, making the school a hub for ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM.

1938 Alumna LOUISE DAHL-WOLFE’s photos help define a new American style of fashion photography. She works for Harper’s Bazaar from 1938–1958.

1927 Alumnus Gutzon Borglum

begins work on his very large-scale public sculpture,

Mount Rushmore.

1961 The school is renamed

SAN FRANCISCO ART INSTITUTE (SFAI),

expanding the definition of art to include perfor-mance, conceptual art, graphic arts, and social

documentary.

1969

JAY DeFEO’s painting The Rose is installed at

SFAI where it remains until the Whitney Museum of

American Art acquires it in 1995. During the

26 years that it was on campus, students were

known to leave roses on the work in homage

to DeFeo.

1969 SFAI expands with a new addition by

PAFFARD KEATINGE-CLAY.

1970ANNIE LEIBOVITZ begins photographing for Rolling Stone magazine while still

a student. She becomes the magazine’s official photographer in 1973.

1966Abstract painter SAM TCHAKALIAN joins the faculty and is a major force in the Painting department for the next 35 years. Among many others, he mentored alumna KATHRYN BIGELOW (Academy Award–winning director of The Hurt Locker), who credits him with her early success as a painter in New York.

1880

The first public showing of a moving picture occurs at SFAA with EADWEARD MUYBRIDGE’s presentation of his Zoopraxiscope.

1949DIrector DOUGLAS G. MACAGY organizes THE WESTERN ROUNDTABLE ON MODERN ART, with MARCEL DUCHAMP, FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT, and GREGORY BATESON, among others. The objective of the roundtable is to “EXPOSE HIDDEN ASSUMPTIONS” and to FRAME NEW QUESTIONS ABOUT ART.

1925 Alumnus REA IRVIN, the first art editor of The New Yorker, designs the maga-zine’s now-iconic typeface and creates the character Eustace Tilley, who graces the cover of the first issue.

1955 ALLEN GINSBERG gives the first public reading of HOWL at an art space founded by alumni, Six Gallery, during alumnus and faculty member Fred Martin’s exhibition Crate Sculptures. 1977

Alumnus DON ED HARDY opens Tattoo City in San Francisco’s Mission District, pioneering the style of fine-line black and grey tattoos.

1977 Alumna MOLLIE KATZEN illustrates and publishes the vegetarian Moosewood Cookbook. The cookbook becomes one of the top 10 bestselling cookbooks of all time.

1942The War Relocation Authority hires faculty member DOROTHEA LANGE to document the internment of Japanese Americans. The photographs are confiscated and do not appear until 2006 when Impounded is published by W.W. Norton.

San Francisco Art Institute

is at the forefront of contempo-

rary practice in the visual arts.

Encompassing some of the most

significant art movements of

the last century, the Institute

has historically embodied

a spirit of experimentation,

risk-taking, creativity, and inno-

vation. With an ever-expanding

roster of esteemed faculty and

alumni, robust Exhibitions and

Public Programs, and a mission

dedicated to the intrinsic

value of art and its vital role

in shaping and enriching

society and the individual,

SFAI is poised for another

century of creative excellence.

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1978SFAI is at the center of the Punk music scene, with students FREDDY (A.K.A. FRITZ) of the Mutants, PENELOPE HOUSTON of the Avengers, and DEBORA IYALL and FRANK ZINCAVAGE of Romeo Void.

1982

SFAI makes a video featuring Saturday Night Live satirical character FATHER GUIDO SARDUCCI (played by Don Novello).

2000 PETER PAU, film alumnus, receives an Academy Award for Cinematography for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

2003 MacArthur “genius” Awards in the visual arts are granted to alumnae TOBA KHEDOORI and LIZA LOU.

2010 Alumna KATHRYN

BIGELOW wins the Academy Award for Best

Director for her film The Hurt Locker.

2014 The Walter and McBean Galleries exhibition Francis Cape: Utopian

Benches continues SFAI’s legacy of creating space for dialogue and

exchange by offering shared seating on 17 poplar benches replicated from those

in use by utopian communities.

2014 The MFA Exhibition

Principal opens to the public, showcasing the

future of creative practice.

2011

SFAI celebrates 140 years of cultural

innovation.

2010 SFAI faculty member CARLOS VILLA

launches Rehistoricizing Abstract Expressionism in the San Francisco

Bay Area, 1950s–1960s, a project that brings visibility to artists of color and

women artists who had been excluded from this history.

2003 Alumnus LANCE ACORD is the cinematographer for Sophia Coppola’s LOST IN TRANSLATION.

2003 Everything Matters, a retrospective of the work of faculty member PAUL KOS, opens at the Berkeley Art Museum.

1981Alumna BETSY SUSSLER founds Bomb magazine in New York.

2002 Students Mitch Temple, Dennis McNulty, and Nathan Suter form ROOT DIVISION—a community art collective dedicated to art education.

1990

An anonymous artist in the early 1980s alters the Diego Rivera mural at SFAI by adding a hammer and sickle to a medal-lion on a central figure. Legend has it that the artist sought to underscore Rivera’s Communist politics. In 1990, the alteration/defacement was discovered, and conservators were brought in—they removed what turned out to be toothpaste.

1990 The performance work of alumna KAREN FINLEY sparks national debate (and a Supreme Court trial) when a grant recommended by the National Endowment for the Arts is vetoed by the NEA Chairman.

1998

DEVENDRA BANHART enrolls at SFAI and starts writing songs in BILL BERKSON’s poetry class.

2006 Alumnus MANUEL NERI receives the International Sculpture Center’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

2007 A retrospective exhibition, HENRY WESSEL: Photographs, at SFMOMA honors the longtime faculty member.

2010 SFAI faculty member and Cuban ex-patriot TONY LABAT returns to Havana for a one-person exhibition at the Wifredo Lam Center. IT IS THE FIRST TIME HIS WORK IS SHOWN IN CUBA.

2012 Alumna ANNIE LEIBOVITZ’s exhibition Pilgrimage opens at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

2010 The Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive presents Radical Light: Alternative Film and Video in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1945–2000, which documents the history of SFAI’s Film and New Genres programs and features dozens of alumni and faculty, including Bruce Connor, Stan Brakhage, Robert Nelson, James Broughton, Sidney Peterson, Anne McGuire, George Kuchar, Jay Rosenblatt, and Craig Baldwin.

2007 City Studio, SFAI’s year-round program for underserved youth, receives an NEA award.

2013 The Walter and McBean Galleries debuts the exhibition ENERGY THAT IS ALL AROUND, featuring SFAI alumni BARRY McGEE, RUBY NERI, and ALICIA McCARTHY, along with Mission School artists CHRIS JOHANSON and MARGARET KILGALLEN. The exhibition travels to NYU in 2014.

1992 THE CLARION

ALLEY MURAL PROJECT (CAMP) is established

by a volunteer collective of six Mission residents,

including alumni AARON NOBLE and RIGO23.

Clarion Alley becomes a key site for the

development of the aesthetic known as the

Mission School.

2009 Alumna JENNIFER M. KROOT releases

the documentary, It Came From Kuchar, about the life and work of longtime film

professor GEORGE KUCHAR and his twin brother Mike.

2012 Alumnus KEHINDE WILEY’s solo

exhibition The World Stage: Israel opens at the Contemporary Jewish Museum.

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