San Francisco Art Week is official. 

The third week of January is when the Fog Design + Art fair, hosted at Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture, has come to colloquially be known as San Francisco Art Week since the fair’s founding in 2014. In recent years as Fog has continued to attract international visitors to the city, local arts organizations have taken advantage of the crowds by opening new shows and creating special programming during the week. 

Now San Francisco art consultant Emily Counihan has put together the first ever official schedule of events of show openings happening around the Bay Area from Jan. 13-21, available at www.sfartweek.com, that will solidify those days as the official San Francisco Art Week.

“I love the energy that art fairs bring into cities,” said Counihan. “Whether it’s Miami, New York or places in Europe, traveling for fairs is also an opportunity to discover local culture, arts organizations and artists, whether they’re part of the fair or not.”

Counihan, who previously worked for the Untitled Art fair (last presented in San Francisco in 2020) and New Art Dealers Alliance in New York, said that when she discovered there was no central organizing body for events during that visual art-focused week in January, “beyond Fog mentioning other things happening on a page on their website,” she saw a need to create one. 

To be included in San Francisco Art Week’s schedule, organizations and galleries must apply and pay a $35 processing fee and a $350 participation fee that go toward supporting administration expenses. Applicants that are designated 501(c)3 organizations pay a discounted $25 application fee and $175 participation fee. 

Applications will continue to be accepted through Monday, Dec. 18. 

Participants already confirmed include museums like the Anderson Collection and Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University; the Bolinas Museum; ICA SF; Marin Museum of Contemporary Art; Oakland Museum of California; the Museum of the African Diaspora; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, which is also the beneficiary of Fog’s opening night gala on Jan. 17. 

San Francisco galleries like Rena Bransten Gallery, Rebecca Camacho Presents, Casemore Gallery, Catharine Clark Gallery, Fraenkel Gallery, Haines Gallery and Gallery Wendi Norris have also signed on, as well as arts organizations including the Marin’s Headlands Center for the Arts and San Francisco’s Minnesota Street Project, For-Site Foundation and Saint Joseph’s Arts Society. 

Counihan plans to announce the full schedule and list of participants on the site later this month.

Significantly, Fog has also signed on to San Francisco Art Week and is lending its support to the schedule as it expands its own programming that will mark its 10th anniversary. 

In addition to the main Fog fair in the Festival Pavilion at Pier 3, this year will also see the launch of Fog Focus, which emphasizes emerging artists and galleries in the Pier 2 space that was formerly home to the San Francisco Art Institute. In addition to the nine participating galleries previously announced and an exhibition of work from Bay Area art centers Creative Growth, Creativity Explored and NIAD, Fog Focus has revealed its activations:

• English artist Lucy Sparrow’s “Feltz Bagels,” a fully immersive Bagel Bakery environment where visitors can buy handmade felt recreations of lunch food to be served by Sparrow herself. 

• A pop-up bookstore named Books or Goods will sell newly released books from 25 local artist-run presses including Sming Sming Books, Land and Sea, Floss Editions, Current Editions, B.B. Press, Rite Editions, More Human Editions, Colpa Press and more. 

• A gray box theater installation will feature work from the Kramlich media art collection. 

• Oakland artist Jose Figueroa, who has been named the official artist-in-residence of Fog Focus, plans to move throughout the fair creating live sketches in addition to presenting his work in Pier 2. 

Programming for the main Fog fair during San Francisco Art Week in Pier 3 has also been announced and is slated to include panels exploring the sustainability of the Bay Area’s creative ecosystem, discussions on collecting, author and artist talks, and a conversation between SFMOMA director Christopher Bedford and Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco CEO Thomas P. Campbell. 

Even with the official schedule to guide visitors to happenings around the Bay Area, Fog will remain the epicenter of activity during the week. 

Reach Tony Bravo: [email protected]