PEAKLIFE

San Francisco provides artistic and cultural enrichment while sheltering in place.

San Francisco is home to some of the finest artistic and cultural institutions in the United States. It’s also a city where innovation and technology are as much a part of the landscape as Victorian houses and cable cars.

When San Francisco’s museums and performing arts organizations temporarily closed to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus, their drive to share and inspire kicked into high gear. The result is a broad and colourful spectrum of ways to experience the enrichment of San Francisco while sheltering in place.

The de Young and Legion of Honor museums, SFMOMA, the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University and Alcatraz Island are featured on Google Arts & Culture. This highly interactive platform practically gives you a private tour of the world’s greatest museums.

SFMOMA, the Asian Art Museum, the de Young and Legion of Honor museums, the Walt Disney Family Museum and the Chinese Historical Society of America are also participating in the Instagram #Museumfromhome phenomenon, which delivers artwork right to followers’ smartphones and other digital devices. The Contemporary Jewish Museum will also participate in #Museumfromhome, as well as #jewseumfromhome via @jewseum on Instagram and Twitter. The Asian Art Museum also participates in #MuseumMomentofZen.

Here are highlights of arts and cultural experiences available remotely from major San Francisco institutions:

San Francisco Symphony and Michael Tilson Thomas (MTT)

In light of the COVID-19 closures, the San Francisco Symphony is making available nine one-hour documentary episodes of “Keeping Score” with Michael Tilson Thomas (MTT). The program traces the lives of eight influential composers from around the world. MTT, now completing his 25th and final season as Music Director of the SFS, explores the motivations and influences behind major classical works by Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Copland, Stravinsky, Berlioz, Ives, Shostakovich, and Mahler. Each episode is accompanied by a one-hour concert program by the San Francisco Symphony. Unlimited free streaming is available on the Symphony’s YouTube channel. Episodes are released Wednesdays and Saturdays through April 11, 2020.

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA)

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s (SFMOMA) “Artist Interviews” series offers nearly 300 artist interviews with some of the most forward-thinking artists of our time, in their own words, as they share their stories, creative processes and how they bring their visions to life in our artist interview series. Artists interviewed include Dawoud Bey, Judy Chicago, Olafur Eliasson, JR, Ellsworth Kelly, and Kara Walker, among others.

SFMOMA’s award-winning arts and culture “Raw Material” podcast features a different “podcaster-in-residence” each season to explore modern and contemporary art through a new lens. The series is currently in season six.

SFMOMA’s digital publications (including the Rauschenberg Research Project, Focus on Japanese Photography and Soundtracks) document and provide context for exhibitions and the museum’s collection, showcase the scholarship of our curators and aim to reach a wide range of readers.

MoAD (Museum of the African Diaspora)

MoAD, a Smithsonian affiliate, invites readers to register for the Virtual African Book Club. April’s book selection is “Small Country” by Gaël Faye. Already an international sensation and prize-winning bestseller in France, an evocative coming-of-age story of a young boy, a lost childhood d and a shattered homeland.

Contemporary Jewish Museum

The Contemporary Jewish Museum (CJM) is sharing their exhibition, “Levi Strauss: A History of American Style” exhibition (at the museum through Aug. 9, 2020) with a virtual tour. In 1873, at the end of the California Gold Rush, Levi Strauss & Co., named for a Bavarian Jewish dry goods merchant in San Francisco, obtained a U.S. patent with tailor Jacob Davis on the process of putting metal rivets in men’s denim work pants to increase their durability. It was the birth of the blue jean. The CJM is providing a weekly schedule of online content and activities.

American Conservatory Theater

American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.) will stream video-recorded performances of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s “Gloria” and Lydia R. Diamond’s “Toni Stone.” A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2016, “Gloria” is a scalpel-sharp dark comedy that explores how we cope with trauma and the tales we tell each other to escape. In the dog-eat-dog office of a New York magazine, twentysomethings Ani, Dean, and Kendra compete for a book deal to kick-start their careers. But after tragedy strikes, which one of them will write the story?

Alonzo King LINES Ballet

The famed Alonzo King Lines Ballet is offering weekly live online classes for teens and adults. From Ballet to hip hop and contemporary to belly dance, LINES Dance Center offers an exciting selection of styles, faculty and levels for all movers. Dancers must register online at https://linesballet.org/dance-center/classes/.

Alonzo King LINES Ballet will be mounting a “virtual” Spring Season, featuring “GRACE,” Alonzo King’s work which premiered at Grace Cathedral in February 2020.

Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco – the de Young and the Legion of Honor – offer exclusive content at their YouTube channel and Blog for a behind the scenes look at our exhibitions and collections. Visitors are also welcome to browse the entire collection featuring American, African, European, Oceanic art and more, available at art.famsf.org.

A new blogpost gives visitors a sneak peek at the must-see show “Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving” (at the de Young through July 26, 2020). In it, guest curator Circe Henestrosa shares the story of the rediscovery of Kahlo’s personal items at the Blue House in Mexico City in 2003.