Nine must-see art shows in the Bay Area this fall

Fall marks the art world’s most electric season, when museums, galleries, fairs, and auctions roar back to life after summer’s lull. The gallerists are finally back from the Hamptons, the curators’ big shows have opened, and the calendar is suddenly packed again. From San Francisco to Oakland — whether you’re drawn to impressionist muses or ancient Chinese furniture — there’s an abundance of extraordinary exhibitions on view. 

Here are The Standard’s picks for what to see this fall.

A strange and mesmerizing scene sets the stage for a show about dance culture: A formation of ostomized roombas creeping across a gridded platform as they ingest pink glitter and expel it in delicate lines behind them, tracing shiny pink fractals in their wake.

The show is highly immersive — yet among the quieter moments, the ceramic works by local artists Sahar Khoury and Maryam Youssif stood out for me. Their pieces ground the exhibition in material intimacy, offering a tactile counterpoint to the exhibition’s pulsing atmosphere.

In a time when San Francisco museums are trying their best to bring in new audiences, Asian Art Museum curator Naz Cuguoglu has done an exceptional job at executing a thought-provoking and stunning exhibition that moves beyond the confines of white-walled gallery spaces.  

Asian Art Museum (opens in new tab), Through Jan. 26

It’s not every day you see the ubiquitous designs of an oriental rug carved into the wooden floors of an art gallery. But nothing about New York artist Selva Aparicio’s work is of the ordinary. 

At Gallery Wendi Norris, the New York-based multidisciplinary artist has brought everyday objects to life with a brushing of autumnal colors. From her recapitulation of Frank Lloyd Wright’s iconic Tree of Life window to Velo de Luto (2020) — “mourning veil” in Spanish —  a wall-mounted installation composed of the wings of 17-year cicadas sewn with the hair of three generations of women in the artists family. 

Gallery Wendi Norris (opens in new tab), Through Jan. 10

Snow, fire, and the sublime power of nature anchor San Francisco photographer Andrew Owen’s exhibition In Light Years at Small Works. His images are both epic and indicting, capturing Northern California’s staggering beauty alongside the scars of human-made destruction. And visiting Small Works — the Potrero Hill gallery that doubles as a beloved bespoke frame shop — is itself reason enough to seek out these sweeping landscape photographs.

Small Works (opens in new tab), Through Dec. 13

In Alamo Square, a dreamworld is hiding in plain sight. Though it has become a go-to spot for emerging and established Bay Area artists, The Jones Institute isn’t exactly a gallery. Run out of the home of artist and curator, Aïda Jones began inviting her artist friends to decorate her home in 2018 before transforming her guest room into a showspace. The latest installation is perhaps her most immersive. Arranged by artist and Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake, the room features ancient Chinese furniture and talismans scattered around a hulking, ancient bed where guests are invited to sign up to become “dreamers,” whereby they spend a night in Jones’ home to access the mysterious, the shadowy, and the otherworldly. 

The Jones Institute (opens in new tab), By appointment only through Dec. 18

For 16 years Claudia Altman-Siegel and her eponymous gallery have been inextricable from San Francisco’s fine arts, championing emerging and established artists locally and internationally. So, last month, when she announced she was stepping back from the scene, it came as a bombshell for the arts economy and for artists citywide. To celebrate the work of its artists, the gallery is hosting an event to commemorate the gallery’s impact on the city, offering ephemera, exhibition posters, discounted artist publications, and a selection of books from its archive. 

Altman Siegel Gallery (opens in new tab), 6-8 p.m. Nov. 20

When San Francisco artist David Ireland died in 2009, his longtime Mission District home at 500 Capp St. was transformed into a living artwork open to the public and for private artist residency programs. 

In Blue Reverie, Bay Area artist Catherine Wagner saturates the house with blue — in windows, on walls, through sculptural objects, and light. The artist has spent years working with this color, drawn to its emotional weight and symbolic range. Here, blue becomes a filter for experiencing Ireland’s iconic home, casting the building’s worn surfaces and idiosyncratic details in a different atmosphere. 

500 Capp St. (opens in new tab), By appointment during the week, 12-5 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays, Through Jan. 10

In the first major exhibition dedicated to the artistic exchange between French Impressionists Édouard Manet and Berthe Morisot, Fine Arts Museums curator Emily Beeny reframes their relationship not as master and pupil—a story long favored by museums—but as a dialogue between muses. The show reunites their Four Seasons paintings (two by Manet, two by Morisot) for the first time in a major exhibition, and sets their closely related canvases side by side, so that in some rooms they seem to go almost scene for scene through their own modern Parisian tales.

Legion of Honor (opens in new tab), Through March 1

Equally steeped in sorrow and strength for the past — and in the hope and precarity of what comes next — the show opens by guiding viewers through the history of Russell City, a once-thriving Black neighborhood in the East Bay that was erased under the banner of urban renewal. The visceral impact of these works, alongside ephemera from East Bay families experiencing homelessness are foiled by AI-generated pieces that appear later in the exhibition. But it’s Oakland artist Adrian Burrell’s sculpture, positioned as the exhibition’s nucleus, that ultimately holds the show together.

Oakland Museum of California (opens in new tab), Through March 1