When artist Lava Thomas unveiled her monument to Maya Angelou on Sept. 19, hundreds of onlookers at the San Francisco Public Library cheered with joy — but also with relief. “She broke the bronze ceiling,” artist George McCalman said of Thomas.
The unveiling of the 8-by-6-foot bronze sculpture, titled “Portrait of a Phenomenal Woman,” marked the conclusion of a seven-year struggle to establish the first civic monument in San Francisco honoring a Black woman, by a Black woman. It was also a milestone for a movement that has been simmering in the Bay Area art world for years: a public embrace of Black art.
Beginning Tuesday, the movement takes its fullest form in the inaugural Nexus: SF/Bay Area Black Art Week. The week is the brainchild of Monetta White, director and CEO of the Museum of the African Diaspora in SoMa.
Through Oct. 6, more than two dozen events across the Bay Area will celebrate Black artists and creators. Attendees can visit the studios of renowned artists like Ramekon O’Arwisters and Arthur Monroe, take a walking tour through the life of “America’s first Black millionaire,” and watch exclusive screenings of Cannes Film Festival winners like “On Becoming a Guinea Fowl.” The week will kick off with a members preview of MoAD’s newest exhibit, “Liberatory Living: Protective Interiors & Radical Black Joy,” which opens to the public Wednesday. Tickets to Saturday’s Afropolitan Ball — MoAD’s major fundraising event — are still available.
“The Bay Area at large has not had a focus on African American art or art of Black folks until the last seven, eight years,” said the painter David Huffman, a Berkeley native who lives in Oakland. Things began to change with the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, which forced the art community to confront some old, barely-hidden prejudices.
“It’s not like we haven’t been around,” said Huffman. “You had some serious Black talent, but it really has never been mainstream, and a lot of galleries have not had African American artists on their roster.”
MoAD director White had the idea for Nexus after noticing that several major events spotlighting Black artists — including MoMA’s Kara Walker show, the unveiling of Thomas’ Maya Angelou sculpture, and the premiere of Titus Kaphar’s film “Exhibiting Forgiveness” at the Mill Valley Film Festival — were planned for this fall. When her museum’s annual Afropolitan Ball was scheduled for early October, she decided to rally the Bay Area art scene around a broader event that would act as a bridge, or nexus, for moving more Black culture into the mainstream.
“Nexus is a natural extension of MoAD’s mission of celebrating and creating space for Black culture and artistry through the global lens of the African diaspora,” said White. “I am very tied to what we do here locally and how it has a global impact.”
For White, this is also a crowning moment in her nearly six years as the head of MoAD. She, unlike the city’s other major art museum directors, has no academic background in art, having spent the majority of her career in the restaurant industry. When the restaurant she co-owned, 1300 on Filmore, closed its original location in 2017 after a decade, White joined MoAD’s board. She not only brought some entrepreneurial experience to a museum that was fresh off a $1.3 million renovation, but a sense of pride in her native roots.
“I’m a die-hard San Franciscan,” she said. “I tell people all the time, ‘If there were a better place, I would live there.’”
“Coming from a non-arts space as her profession before her work at MoAD, she just brings freshness to the arts space and to the museum,” said gallerist Jonathan Carver Moore, who has loaned works to MoAD and serves on the committee of the Afropolitan Ball.
White said she hopes Nexus gives other art festivals in San Francisco a run for their money — and pushes them to include more Black creativity in the process. Her supporters in the art scene are lining up behind her.
“This city owes us a lot,” said McCalman. “We all, as Black people, made a conscious choice to stay here. So this Nexus is a celebration of our decision to be really proud of living here.”