The San Francisco Arts Commission was established in the Charter of the City and County of San Francisco in 1932 to ensure that the arts would be incorporated into the civic infrastructure for the City’s residents. We meet our responsibilities through an extensive set of programs and special projects.

Programs Overview

Art Gallery

The San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery makes contemporary art accessible to broad audiences through curated exhibitions that both reflect our regional diversity and position Bay Area visual art production within an international contemporary art landscape. Please visit exhibitions at our flagship gallery at 401 Van Ness Avenue in the Veterans Building, and stroll by our window installation site at 155 Grove Street. Our Art at City Hall program, located on the ground floor of historic San Francisco City Hall, offers rotating exhibitions of artwork with a social conscience.

City Hall Docent Tours

The City Hall Docent Tour Program offers guided tours of this historical landmark Beaux Arts building, the seat of San Francisco government for nearly a century.

Civic Art Collection

The Civic Art Collection program is responsible for cataloguing and conserving the more than 2,000 pieces of art belonging to the City outside its museums.

Civic Design Review

The Civic Design Review Committee of architects and designers conducts a three-phase review of new and renovated civic construction projects to ensure design quality of city structures. Projects include buildings, bridges, viaducts, elevated ways, approaches, gates, fences, lamps or other structures on land belonging to the City and County. The Committee also reviews arches, bridges, approaches and other structures extending over or onto any street, highway, park or other public place belonging to the City and County.

Community Arts And Education

This program promotes community revitalization through the arts in economically disadvantaged and underserved areas and supports programs serving special constituencies, such as youth, the homeless, and others. The Community Arts and Education program also oversees the City’s four neighborhood cultural centers. The San Francisco WritersCorps, placing writers in communities where youth live, work, and go to school, is administered by the Community Arts and Education program.

Cultural Equity Grants

Cultural Equity Grants provides support for the enrichment of San Francisco’s multicultural landscape. Four programs offer project-oriented grants to arts organizations and individual artists to nurture the continuing growth of a vibrant arts scene that celebrates the City’s vast ethnic diversity and variety of cultural traditions.

Public Art: Art Enrichment

Courthouses, libraries, City offices, the airport and other civic structures are enlivened through this program, which integrates works by artists in the construction of City buildings and parks, as well as in broader urban design contexts, such as traffic and pedestrian malls and transit corridors.

Street Artists

San Francisco’s street artists provide residents and visitors with a colorful outdoor marketplace that contributes to the economic life of the city.

Summer In The City

The Summer in the City “pops” concert series provides music lovers with diverse and affordable performances by our renowned San Francisco Symphony orchestra and a sparkling roster of guest artists in Davies Symphony Hall.