Fog Design + Art Fair at the Fort Mason Center Festival Pavilion. Image courtesy of www.fogfair.com and Joseph Driste photography.

January 14th – 17th – FOG Design + Art 2016 at Fort Mason Center Festival Pavilion: The third annual celebration of innovative design will feature exhibits, installations, and discussions with the country’s top gallerists, design dealers, artists, architects, and style-makers. FOG Design + Art is once again collaborating with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, with proceeds from the FOG Preview Gala and fair supporting SFMOMA’s programming. Purchase tickets for the January 13th Preview Gala here.

David Ireland and interior elements of 500 Capp Street. Images courtesy of 500 Capp Street Foundation.

January 15th – 17th – 500 Capp Street Foundation/ The David Ireland House opening events: The David Ireland House at 500 Capp Street, located in San Francisco’s culturally dense Mission District, was Ireland’s residence for 30 years and his best-known work of art. This transformed modest two-story 1886 Edwardian-Italianate served simultaneously as the artist’s environmental artwork, social sculpture, and home. After completion of a two-year construction and preservation effort that began in 2014, visitors will now be able to experience the home and its embedded artworks as Ireland intended, immersing themselves in an enigmatic, 360-degree portrait of one of the West Coast’s most important practitioners of conceptual and installation art. In the spirit of Ireland, the 500 Capp Street Foundation will conduct public tours and events, host a residency program, and maintain a permanent archive of personal papers, photographs and publications at 500 Capp Street. Visit a schedule of opening public events here.

Meghann Riepenhoff: Litteral Drift installation view. Image courtesy of SF Camerawork.

Tuesday, January 19th – Meghann Riepenhoff: Littoral Drift conversation with the artist at SF Camerawork: The title of the exhibition, Littoral Drift, is a scientific term describing the action of wind-driven waves transporting sand and sediment along the shoreline. This is a process that is beyond human control, and provides a symbolic parallel to the artist’s working method which pushes the boundaries of the photographic medium through improvisational experimentation, incorporating naturally occurring water effects and the chemistry of cyanotype printing. In these new and intertwined bodies of work on view, she directly employs the effects of waves, rain, wind, and sediment to leave physical inscriptions through direct contact with photographic material. She uses the cyanotype — one of the oldest photographic processes — in an unprecedented way, partially photo-chemically processing each work so that they remain dynamic and change in response to their environments over time. This exhibition is ongoing to February 3rd with a conversation with the artist and Emily Lambert, Associate Director, Fraenkel Gallery on Tuesday, January 19th from 6-8 pm. SF Camerawork is located at 1011 Market Street, 2nd floor.

Tsherin Sherpa, ‘Fifty Four Views of Wisdom and Compassion’ (detail), 2014. Image courtesy of SFAC Galleries.

Friday, January 22nd – Bring It Home: (Re)Locating Cultural Legacy Through the Body at the San Francisco Arts Commission Galleries: The San Francisco Arts Commission (SFAC) Galleries celebrates the opening of a new, and greatly expanded 3000-square-foot gallery space in the historic War Memorial Veterans Building with three distinct exhibition projects featuring works by thirteen regional artists. Taking up the largest volume of the gallery is the exhibition Bring it Home: (Re)Locating Cultural Legacy through the Body, curated by SFAC Galleries Director Meg Shiffler and independent curator Kevin B. Chen. The exhibition presents work from artists representing diverse Bay Area communities, and centers thematically on how these artists grapple with cultural identity and its relationship to the human condition. Also opening on January 22nd are Susan O’Malley, Do More of What you Love and Enter: 126: Coalescence, a commissioned site-specific installation by Annette Jannotta and Olivia Ting. The Grand Opening Celebration is January 22nd from 6-9 pm and is located at 401 Van Ness Avenue.

The new BAMPFA building and selection of works included in the inaugural exhibition ‘Architecture of Life’. Images courtesy of BAMPFA.

January 28th – 31st – UC Berkeley Art Museum Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) Grand Opening Week: The UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive is the visual arts center of the University of California, Berkeley, the nation’s leading public research university. Architecture of Life, the inaugural exhibition in BAMPFA’s landmark new building, explores the ways that architecture—as concept, metaphor, and practice—illuminates various aspects of life experience: the nature of the self and psyche, the fundamental structures of reality, and the power of the imagination to reshape our world. Occupying every gallery in the new building, designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, the exhibition comprises over two hundred works of art in a wide range of media, as well as scientific illustrations and architectural drawings and models, made over the past two thousand years. Visit the schedule of Grand Opening Events here.