Ingenuity in the art world is abundant! In May’s To Do List, we highlight interesting places for viewing, learning and participating online. We have also included donation opportunities that help artists directly.

Supporting Artists and Arts Organizations

Exhibition and event cancellations, along with gallery closures have caused artists and arts organizations to struggle in unprecedented ways. Consider giving more this year to your favorite arts organization, or accelerate the timing of your gift by giving now instead of the end of the year. Please consider making a one-time tax-deductible donation to the following relief funds.

Bay Area Safety Net

The Safety Net Fund is designed to help artists in the Bay Area and gives grants to artists that typically make their living offline at events & retail establishments that have been cancelled or closed. This includes performing artists, musicians, visual artists, event producers, and other types of creators.

Artist’s Relief is a coalition of national small to mid-sized arts grant-makers. Practicing artists living in all fifty states, territories, and Tribal Nations, working in any discipline are eligible to receive $5,000 grants.

Foundation for Contemporary Art created a temporary fund to meet the needs of experimental artists. Board members will will match your donation! The Foundation will disburse one-time $1,500 grants to artists who have had performances or exhibitions canceled or postponed because of the pandemic.

(left) Adia Millett, “The Future’s Eye”, 2019. (middle) Ferrari Sheppard, “Kaya”, 2020. (right) Rashaad Newsome, “Fitted Crown”, 2011. Images courtesy of MoAD.

Museum of African Diaspora (MoAD) Auction: Artists, donors, businesses, collectors, and individuals have banded together to ensure the vitality of this significant San Francisco institution. Bidding is open now and features works from some of the more important artists of African descent around the globe. Browse lots and place bids before the sale closes on Tuesday, May 5th, at 2:00pm. 

(left) Pablo Calderon, “Untitled”, 2018. (middle) Makeya Kaiser, “The Whitney Houston (I will always love you lyrics)”, 2017. (right) Sara O’Sullivan, “Sunglasses from the 70’s”, 2015. Images courtesy of Creativity Explored.

Life Changes Art Auction – Creativity Explored  is an an online silent auction featuring an incredible selection of collectible original artwork by Creativity Explored artists with developmental disabilities. Start bidding on Friday, May 1 at 3:00 pm. A portion of proceeds go directly back to the CE artist. Bidding closes promptly at 9:00 pm on Sunday, May 3rd.

Interesting Bay Area Art Online

MSP.TV

Minnesota Street Project is broadcasting a series of daily video programs on MSP.TV, an IGTV channel. Made up of videos from their galleries, studios artists, and Bay Area arts community members, MSP.TV features up to five shows a day, ranging from guided meditations to artist hosted happy hours.

Fraenkel Gallery’s Eye Contact Episodes Eye Contact is Fraenkel Gallery’s series of three-minute artist interviews. Made remotely, each episode asks an artist to describe a current source of visual sustenance. In the video above, Richard Misrach discusses his family photo albums. Follow Fraenkel Gallery on Instagram to watch episodes live on Fridays.

Bandana inspired by Loralei.

The Belonging Project’s goal is to share the pivotal places, activities, communities, and experiences that shape Bay Area residents’ connectedness to a neighborhood and region. Created by Christine Wong Yap, the project is a fun, interactive exploration of letters, how to’s, advice, and much more from a variety of people who have shared thoughts about belonging.

Galleries Helping Galleries

Andrea Büttner, “Beggar” series, 2016. Installation view of “Vulnerability and Doubt” exhibition, 2018. Image courtesy of Hollybush Gardens Gallery.

David Zwirner is providing an online platform for smaller galleries in New York and this month, in London. Platform: London brings together twelve London galleries who will present one artist in their program. In many cases, exhibitions by these artists were canceled or cut short.

A child with Will Boone’s sculpture, “P-22”, 2020. Image courtesy of Casey Kelbaugh.

Starting May 15, Gagosian and Jeffrey Deitch will join forces with many other Los Angeles galleries to help smaller galleries in LA and promote engagement with the local and international art audience by creating @galleryplatform.la. They will present twelve gallery “viewing rooms” each week, with each gallery appearing on the platform once every six weeks. The platform will also include an editorial section featuring video visits with LA artists, collectors and gallerists. Follow them on Instagram for updates.

Places to Wonder

The Wattis Institute’s Free Online Library lets you explore videos of artists talking about their work as well as video and audio documentation of all past lectures, performances, and events. There are also essays about exhibitions, reviews, reading lists, and interviews to read.

Online Art Fairs

Tala Madani, “A Silver Tan”, 2020. Image courtesy of 303 Gallery.

Frieze NY Viewing Room will launch May 8-15 with more than 200 galleries from across the globe. The Viewing Room will present major works by established and emerging artists in a virtual gallery space.

Future Library Project was inaugurated in 2014. For this project, a forest was planted in Norway, which will supply paper for a special anthology of books to be printed in 2114. One writer every year of the project will contribute a text, with the writings held in trust, unread and unpublished, until the one hundred years has passed. The manuscripts are stored in a specially designed room in the new public library in Oslo.

This newly commissioned film, that marks the first five years of Future Library, was recently launched online by the National Galleries of Scotland, and the Future Library Trust, after the premature closure of artist Katie Paterson’s exhibition at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art.