San Francisco Arts Commission Announces Carolina Aranibar-Fernandez As New Director of Galleries and Public Programs

SAN FRANCISCO, October 19, 2022 – The San Francisco Arts Commission is thrilled to announce that Carolina Aranibar-Fernandez will be joining the Arts Commission as its new Director of Galleries and Public Programs. 

In this role, Aranibar-Fernandez will curate and produce exhibitions and public programs that expand the dialogue between contemporary art and issues of our time, develop community partnerships and oversee guest curators.

“Carolina is an extraordinary artist and thinker,” shared Ralph Remington, Director of Cultural Affairs. “Her community-informed practice examining the past, present and future with a socio-political lens is nothing short of fascinating. She is solidly grounded in racial equity principles and champions inclusivity. I am simply thrilled that she will bring her talents, research, activism, and point of view to lead the SFAC Galleries and Public Programs, at this particular moment in time.”

Aranibar-Fernandez will begin her role as Director of Galleries and Public Programs on November 14, 2022.

The Director of Galleries and Public Programming is responsible for developing and sustaining a multifaceted, dynamic and progressive-thinking program that seeks to broaden awareness of the relationship between the arts and our civic realm, through producing exhibitions and public programs that meet standards of excellence and address SFAC’s values and goals. Aranibar-Fernandez will also oversee traveling exhibitions, the Sister City Exchange program and the Artist in Residence Program.

“I feel honored to join the Arts Commission and I am thrilled for the opportunity to work with San Francisco's vibrant arts community,” said Carolina Aranibar-Fernandez. “As I take on this position, my goal is to help amplify the diverse voices and practices of the artists that make the City and County of San Francisco a unique and renowned creative hub.”

Carolina Aranibar-Fernandez is a Bolivian born interdisciplinary artist, educator, and arts administrator. Integrating art with social change for the past ten years, Carolina has worked with artists, curated and co-developed public projects, and documented the stories of communities and organizations. 

She recently served as a cultural and creative placekeeping consultant at LISC Phoenix and RAIL CDC, and as a Faculty Associate at Arizona State University. Carolina is a recipient of the Race, Arts and Democracy Fellowship at Center for the Study of Race and Democracy at Arizona State University, the Projecting All Voices Fellowship at the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at ASU, and the Arts Fellowship at the Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar, Doha. 

Aranibar-Fernandez’s art and praxis address concerns of displacement, privatization of land, environmental issues, and the invisible-exploited labor that supplies global trade. Her professional career as an artist includes numerous national and international exhibitions, including works featured at the National Museum of Art in Bolivia, the border fence of MX/US, in New York, Los Angeles, Arizona, Qatar, and in the Kathmandu Triennale in Nepal. Aranibar-Fernandez received an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University and a BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute.

###

About the San Francisco Arts Commission
The San Francisco Arts Commission (SFAC) is the City agency that champions the arts as essential to daily life by investing in a vibrant arts community, enlivening the urban environment and shaping innovative cultural policy. Our programs include: Civic Art Collection, Civic Design Review, Community Investments, Public Art, SFAC Galleries, and Art Vendor Licensing. To learn more, visit sfartscommission.org.

About SFAC Galleries
Since 1970, the SFAC Galleries has presented contemporary art exhibitions that highlight the region's artistic diversity in the heart of San Francisco's Civic Center, making 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 art landscape. Over the years, the gallery has evolved into a dynamic contemporary art program that has shown more than 4,400 local, national, and international artists in over 480 exhibitions at two Civic Center locations (SFAC Main Gallery, located in the War Memorial Veterans Building; and at City Hall on the Ground Floor and North Light Court).

The Galleries program also manages the Arts Commission's Artist in Residence (AIR) program which builds partnerships with City Departments in order to provide unique residency opportunities that result in strengthening the value of artists participating in and responding to the advancement of civic dialogue.