Surviving and thriving: having weathered the dot-com boom and bust of the late 1990s, the Bay Area's art community is going strong, its museums and galleries keeping pace with a wealth of innovative emerging artists - Report From San Francisco

Art in America, Nov, 2002 by Stephanie Cash

The 1990s belonged to San Francisco, epicenter of the dot-com frenzy that held the nation in its grasp. The city was flush with new wealth and a bottomless well of optimism.

But perhaps nowhere more than San Francisco did the excess of the dot-com years have such mixed results. Many existing small businesses were choked out by the kudzulike growth of the new economy. Despite the largesse directed toward a number of art institutions, most notably the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, which made an unprecedented number of acquisitions, the city's art community was among those hardest hit. A general sense of unease settled over the city as supersonic gentrification and skyrocketing rents displaced artists, non-profits and many longtime residents. Though the impact was citywide, the Mission District was the locus of the most intense development. Traditionally a Latino area with low-income housing, the locale was long attractive to artists, many of whom had moved there for the affordable living and studio spaces. For the same reason, Internet start-ups also gravitated to the area. Rebecca Solnit and Susan Schwartzenberg chronicled what happened in their 2000 book Hollow City: The Siege of San Francisco and the Crisis of American Urbanism. Their "report from the front line" looks at "the many ways that wealth can actually diminish the cultural richness of American urban life." The low-budget documentary film Boom: The Sound of Eviction also captures the district's hardships brought on by the "good times."

Many in the San Francisco art world are enjoying a sense of poetic justice these days, now that the money-flaunting young dot-commers have "moved back in with their parents." The city's atmosphere has changed and the boom years seem like a distant memory. A calm and a sense of sanity have returned (though the artists forced out by rising rents have not). "For Rent" signs that had all but disappeared during the dot-com years are popping up again. Commercial vacancies downtown and in the South of Market (SoMa) area are reported to be as high as 20 percent; two years ago the vacancy rate was about 1 percent. Large excavated pits remain empty as companies have failed and construction projects have been scaled back or folded. And complaints abound about the esthetically bereft "loft style" apartment buildings that were thrown up around the city to appease the minions of the lustful new economy.

On the Verge

San Francisco's dot-com-inspired braggadocio didn't, however, rub off on the art world. "The art scene is so small, so insular" was a common, almost apologetic, refrain I heard while visiting last spring. Nonetheless, I left feeling that I had only scratched the surface. In addition, the work I saw was of consistently high quality. Despite the art community's built-in inferiority complex, San Francisco's mild weather, spectacular natural beauty and a laid-back vibe are among the reasons cited by the artists who make it their home. Others appreciate the freedom that comes with working away from the competitive pressures and distractions of larger art centers.

With an increasing number of homegrown artists receiving international attention, San Francisco itself seems poised to become a major art hub, though this is apparently a familiar feeling for many of its arts professionals. According to artist Gay Outlaw, "San Francisco is perpetually becoming," but it never quite seems to get there. Something of a catch-22 situation exists in San Francisco. Like New York, it has always been a rather transient town because of the high cost of living. Then there is a tendency for many artists to leave the city--whether they are native to the area, transplants, or go there for the art schools--in order to establish their careers in places like L.A., New York or Europe.

The problem is exacerbated by the lack of a collector base that shops locally. Virtually everyone I spoke to acknowledged the need for market development. For various reasons, many collectors enjoy buying on the international circuit. Ironically, many San Francisco artists don't receive recognition at home until they've had a show in New York or L.A., reaffirming the belief that you've got to move out to move up. It is not uncommon to hear stories of collectors buying the work of a San Francisco artist from a New York gallery, unaware that that artist had already shown in San Francisco.

And yet some of the country's most prominent collectors of modern and contemporary art--with tastes ranging from blue chip to adventurous--live in the Bay Area: among them are Frances and John Bowes, Norah and Norman Stone, Doris and Donald Fisher, Kent and Vicki Logan (who recently moved to Vail but remain active in the San Francisco area), Charles and Helen Schwab, Evelyn Haas, Mimi and Peter Haas, Harry and Mary Margaret Anderson (familiarly known as Hunk and Moo), Pamela and Richard Kramlich, Steven Oliver, Richard and Lenore Niles, Themis and Dare Michos, and Robin Wright Moll. In June, the city lost an invaluable champion of the arts with the passing, at age 97, of Phyllis Wattis, the grande dame of the city's art community [see "Artworld," Sept. '02]. Though a number of collectors are very supportive of and involved in local initiatives, perhaps no one was as influential citywide, and as admired, as was Wattis. Until the end of her life, she attended gallery and museum openings and was an active trustee of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, since 1973. She also served on boards of the Fine Arts Museums (M.H. de Young Memorial Museum and the California Palace of the Legion of Honor), the symphony and the ballet, and endowed numerous contemporary art programs, curatorial positions and artists' residencies at various institutions.