Secret soirees, caviar carts, pricey paintings: Inside SF’s exclusive Art Week parties

The art collectors of San Francisco are exhausted. 

For the past week, they schlepped in their finery to soirees across the city as part of San Francisco Art Week, rushing to accept Partiful invites and sometimes waiting days to find out exact party locations. Caviar was eaten by the tray. THC gummies were consumed in demure 2 mg doses. And millions of dollars were spent on artworks.

One of the hardest-to-score invitations was for Thursday’s top-secret party hosted by interior designer Nicole Hollis, who told invitees only that the event would be somewhere in San Francisco. When the address arrived in attendees’ in-boxes hours before the event, it led to the English Tudor estate of private equity billionaire Scott Crabill, whose house boasts art by the likes of Richard Serra, Ruth Asawa, Andy Warhol, and Keith Haring. 

“If this is a private collection,” remarked interior designer Tina Lai, “it’s a private museum.”

It was at parties like this that the real action of San Francisco Art Week, which launched two years ago on the coattails of the FOG Fair, took place. And this year, the parties were more numerous than ever. “It was impossible to do everything,” said Ethan Beard, chair of the Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco.

ICA SF kicked off the week with a free event on Saturday that got so many RSVPs the organizers sent out a text blast hours beforehand asking people to cancel if they were no longer coming. More than 1,600 showed up. Despite the enthusiasm, some art cognoscenti turned up their noses at the crowd. “They weren’t really there for the art,” sniffed one FOG Gala attendee. Implied but not said: They were there for the open bar.  

One big name who did make it out: Mayor Daniel Lurie, who stopped by just four days into the job. “The days of outsiders defining San Francisco are over,” Lurie said in a speech barely audible over the din. “We, the artists, the innovators, get to decide how we define ourselves.”

As the night wound down, a group of VIPs — including ICA director Ali Gass and Christie’s executive Sarah Wendell Sherrill and her husband, District 2 Supervisor Stephen Sherrill — peeled back an “access restricted” sign over the fourth-floor elevator button and headed up to the top of the atrium, where they found a small group of venture capitalists and art patrons kicking a bottle of Casa Dragones añejo between them.

On Tuesday at Mission Bowling Club, Jeffrey Fraenkel of Fraenkel Gallery, a 46-year San Francisco institution, was hosting what he called his annual “leveling party” that “mixes the high and low” — though the crowd seemed decidedly high-level: Among the bowlers were revered event producer Stanlee Gatti, philanthropist and art collector Susan Swig, and art dealer Sabrina Buell. 

Oh, and John Waters, whose appearance thrilled even the city’s jaded socialites. The filmmaker stayed until 9:30 before disappearing in an UberX. “He should have taken a Waymo,” huffed one observer.

No one bowled particularly well — The Standard did not see a score over 130 — though artists Carrie Mae Weems and Richard Misrach got points for enthusiasm. 

All of this was just a warm-up for the week’s crown jewel on Wednesday: the FOG Gala that officially opens the fair. Artists, collectors, and industry professionals gathered inside Fort Mason Center for first dibs on works from 59 galleries — and to see and be seen among carts of caviar, seas of sushi, and mountains of martinis. 

The former Army post was covered in red and purple jewel-tone drapes and outfitted with an upstairs lounge, where attendees sipped cocktails under lamps covered in what looked like dried moss. One area the design team couldn’t quite transform: the bathrooms, which remained dingy and drafty, though they performed better than in year’s past. (Two years ago, a plumbing leak brought flowing sewage into the booth of Oakland’s Part 2 Gallery, destroying thousands in infrastructure that had to be reimbursed by the fair.)

The yearly arts preview doubles as an unofficial fashion show. Artist Madeleine Fitzpatrick turned heads in a sequined number accessorized with a feathered hat, and floral designer Tyson Lee sported a floor-length hot-pink coat and a handbag shaped like a life-size pigeon. (He changed coats to attend the after-party, saying he kept tripping on the last one. The handbag remained.) 

The largest reported sale of the evening was a piece by New York-based painter Avery Singer. But the talk of the town was Joan Brown’s painting “Let’s Dance,” which was part of last year’s SFMOMA retrospective of the late San Francisco artist.

“[This piece] is the uncontested belle of the FOG ball,” said Florie Hutchinson, an uber-connected arts consultant. “It is a gem and an icon in the artist’s oeuvre. I hope its next home is a worthy one.”

At the gala’s “unofficial official after-party” hosted by Four One Nine, a creative agency in SoMa, guests were greeted at the door with the offer of a 2mg THC edible or a bag of weed-free gummy worms. 

Attendees included arts patron Adam Swig, who snapped selfies with friends, and Jonathan Carver Moore, whose eponymous gallery sold all 10 of its booth’s Anoushka Mirchandani works before the first night of the fair ended. 

The crowd was younger than that of the FOG Gala, and the vibe more casual; one woman on the dance floor leaned into a tank-top-sporting gentleman and grabbed his biceps, exclaiming, “How do you get these?!” 

“This feels like L.A.,” said one art handler who came up from SoCal to work at the fair, before correcting himself: “This feels cooler than L.A.”

A much more rarified crowd gathered at Crabill’s mansion Thursday, after receiving the coveted street address just hours before the event. 

Women in cocktail dresses and a surprising number of men in blazers and sneakers sipped wine and snacked on caviar-topped seaweed tarts while taking in the painstakingly designed interiors. (According to Lisa Donohoe, an artist who worked on the home, the plaster on the walls of one bathroom alone took two weeks to complete.) But the most stunning aspect of the house is the art collection: More than 50 works from preeminent artists, including a Calder mobile, a giant Yayoi Kusama pumpkin, and four original photos from Robert Mapplethorpe’s “Calla Lily” series.

Crabill flitted around, looking slightly nervous at the sheer number of people in his house. Guests remarked at how unusual it was for someone to open such an opulent home to so many — there were dozens milling around the high-ceilinged dining rooms, living room, and patios. “My wife would never allow this,” remarked another contractor, Josh Wiener, adding later: “And she would make everyone take off their shoes.” 

Across town, at the Saint Joseph’s Arts Society — an opulent former church space in SoMa — A-list designer Ken Fulk and Gap executive and creative director Zac Posen hosted a younger, slightly more debaucherous crowd on Thursday.

Amid flickering candlelight, people drank “holy water martinis” in draped alcoves and got down with sequin-sporting dancers wearing disco balls over their heads. In homage to Warhol, whose work is on display at Saint Joseph’s, the organizers occasionally projected photos of the artist onto the sanctuary’s cavernous stone walls. 

Though the party was meant to be Posen’s public introduction to San Francisco since he moved here last year, the designer was nowhere to be found — not even in the “Gap Inc. VIP lounge.” Fulk was there, however, in full sailor boy regalia, alongside a light-up hula hoop dancer, a small dog, a mezcal tasting station, and lots of leather.

As over-the-top as the scene was, it ended in typical San Francisco style: by 10:30 p.m.