Art can be an equalizer: When you and someone else are both viewing an evocative work, something about that shared experience can be revealing.

On Thursday, April 1, I was invited to tour the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art with Mayor London Breed. Like any politician, Breed brings an agenda to her public appearances — in this case, to remind the Bay Area that, after a year of pandemic, the city’s museums are reopening to the public. But there were moments during her visit where I thought the mayor let go of official business.

I wondered what personal connection Breed would find in the work, given her role in the year’s headlines.

The shows, “Bay Area Walls” and “Close to Home: Creativity in Crisis,” are both inextricably tied to the present. “Walls” is presented over three floors at the museum and includes murals and site installations by local artists reacting to the coronavirus and recent social reckonings. “Close to Home” highlights seven Bay Area artists responses’ to the same events, with an emphasis on how the disruption of daily life changed their artistic practices.

Joining Breed were Vallie Brown, director of San Francisco Grants for the Arts; Ralph Remington, director of cultural affairs at the San Francisco Arts Commission; SFMOMA Director Neal Benezra, its board president Diana Nelson, Chief Curator Janet Bishop and Photography Curator Corey Keller.

“It’s been a year,” Breed said as she arrived from a news conference at Moscone Center.  “We feel like we’ve all been in COVID jail. It’s time to break out and live a little bit.”

In recent weeks, Breed has publicly upped her support for the arts, timing that may have  influenced her visit: On March 25, the city launched a new guaranteed income program that will give 130 San Francisco artists $1,000 a month for six months. And in February, Breed proposed a backfill of the Proposition E Hotel Tax Fund, which helps support local arts.

“I’ve already made a commitment in my budget at least for the next two years to backfill a lot of those anticipated cuts,” Breed said.  “But I think San Francisco is going to come alive again and that, fingers crossed, this is a program that can continue.”

Breed said repeatedly during her visit that she wants to see art, and artists, interacting on the front lines as restrictions lift. Imagine what it would be like to see people dancing down the staircase at the museum, she asked, or painting in the lobby.

Her personal taste is art that’s up-close and audience participation driven: parades, festivals and events that are centered in local communities. During her 10 years as director of the African American Art and Culture Complex, she said she developed an understanding that some artists need more specialized support than others.

“I had this one artist who drove me nuts, but when he got on that stage …” Breed said of one performer who had trouble navigating intricacies of arts funding. “He didn’t know how to do anything other than being a dancer and a choreographer. That was his life. That’s why choosing the arts to pilot this (guaranteed income) program was so important. I want people like that to be their best creative selves.”

After viewing Liz Hernandez’s mural “Conjuro para la sanación de nuestro futuro” (“A spell for the healing of our future”), which consists of images of lungs, handwashing and other emblems of the year in a political poster style, Breed and Benezra chatted about artists the mayor appreciates. Breed mentioned Romare Bearden, a painter and collage artist exhibited at SFMOMA in 2004, whom she also featured at the African American Arts and Culture Complex. She came to the show at SFMOMA several times to see the work of the influential Black artist.

In the next gallery, a photograph by Erina Alejo, part of her series “My Ancestors Followed Me Here,” sparked a moment of recognition in the mayor. Breed pointed out a photo of a Mission neighborhood mural honoring Ronnie Goodman, a San Francisco painter and former distance runner who died in 2020 at age 60. 

Goodman was well-known for his vivid use of color and the distinctive style of figures that appeared in his work: He was also known for being unhoused in recent years and setting up shelter in the Mission District. In 2011, after he was released from incarceration, Goodman’s work was shown at City Hall, a show Breed helped organize.

“I knew him; a lot of my friends bought his artwork,” said Breed. “All of his pieces sold. I made sure he got 100% of his proceeds.” Later, Goodman’s work was loaned to Breed by a friend to hang in her mayoral office. Hearing Breed talk about him, Goodman sounded like the kind of person Breed is trying to reach with the guaranteed artist income program.

The visit lasted about 45 minutes, a decent amount of time for a public official to be anywhere. As the mayor prepared to leave, she and Benezra talked about SFMOMA’s ongoing loans of artwork for her office.

Breed asked what other works might be available to refresh the spaces. After all, City Hall, too, was preparing for a return to something resembling pre-pandemic life.

Related Stories

San Francisco rolls out a guaranteed income program giving artists $1,000 a month

S.F. Mayor London Breed proposes arts funding to make up for hotel tax shortfall

Ex-prisoner Ronnie Goodman in City Hall art show

Homeless San Francisco artist dies just as he hits the big time with New York MoMA exhibit