San Francisco Art Association

The San Francisco Art Association (SFAA) was founded in 1871 by local artists and their supporters to promote art in the Bay Area. In 1874 the SFAA founded the California School of Design, an art school offering classes. In 1893 Edward Francis Searles donated the Mark Hopkins Mansion to the California School of Design, which was renamed the Mark Hopkins Institute of Art (MHIA) and held in trust by the University of California. The 1906 fire completely destroyed the buiilding which housed the MHIA. A new building was constructed on the site and the MHIA changed its name to the San Francisco Institute of Art. In 1916 the SFAA absorbed the San Francisco Society of Artists in a merger and changed the name of the San Francisco Institute of Art to the California School of Fine Arts (CSFA). In 1926 the CSFA was moved to a new building at 800 Chestnut Street. From 1930 to 1955 the SFAA published the San Francisco Art Association Bulletin. In 1961 the SFAA ceased operation after merger with the CSFA, and the CSFA was renamed the San Francisco Art Institute, which continued until its permanent closure in 2022.

Quotes

• A few of Conner's assemblages became fully dimensional sculptures. Some were outspoken expressions of social protest. Child, a grotesquely gnarled, life-sized figure in black was placed in a real highchair, was inspired by the gas-chamber execution of the convicted rapist Caryl Chessman, who for years had made appeals for clemency from San Quentin's Death Row. It scandalized viewers when it was exhibited in a San Francisco Art Association Annual at the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum.
  • Thomas Albright, Art in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1945-1980: An Illustrated History. University of California Press. 1985. p. 99. ISBN 0520051939. 

• Much of San Francisco's artistic and bohemian life revolved around the Mark Hopkins Institute of Art and the San Francisco Art Association. The institute converted ground-flour salons and drawing rooms into exhibition galleries and classrooms, using many of the spacious chambers on the top floors as studies. Major art exhibitions were scheduled twice each year in the spring and fall. Every winter the students hosted one of San Francisco's major social events of the season, the colorful and not always sedate Mardi Gras ball. Everyone appeared in costume, including Alice B. Toklas, who once came dressed as Carmen, a high point for the revelers, arriving with the crowning of King and Queen of Bohemia at midnight.
  • Donald J. Hagerty, The Life of Maynard Dixon. Gibbs Smith. 2010. p. 30. ISBN 1423603796. 

• The San Francisco Art Association has a distinguished record for encouraging the development of modern art. ...
  The San Francisco Museum of Art, originally under the administration of the Art Association, was installed in the Civic Center in 1935, under the directorship of Dr. Grace L. McCann Morley. ...
  One of the unique features of the SFAA is the Artists' Council, which nominates the yearly juries for the annual show.
  • Erle Loran, essay in: Painting and Sculpture of the San Francisco Art Association: Three Essays (Erle Loran; Weldon Kees, & Ernest Mundt). University of California Press. 2023. ISBN 0520349660.  (1st edition 1952)

External links

• Encyclopedic article on San Francisco Art Association on Wikipedia
• San Francisco Art Association and related organizational records, 1871-1978, bulk 1871-1920. Archive of American Arts, Smithsonian Institute.