FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Date: Wednesday, September 4, 2008
Contact: Mary Chou at mary.chou@sfgov.org or at 415-252-3215

The San Francisco Arts Commission invites the public to two Central Subway Public Art Program community meetings in September.

1. Thursday, September 18, 2008 from 6 to 7:30 PM at the Museum of the African Diaspora, located at 685 Mission Street at Third Street in the South of Market district of San Francisco.
2. Tuesday, September 23, 2008 from 6 to 7:30 PM at the Chinese Historical Society of America, located at 965 Clay Street between Powell and Stockton in San Francisco’s Chinatown district.

The San Francisco Arts Commission is conducting two community meetings, each in a different Central Subway corridor district, to discuss the Central Subway Arts Master Plan. The Arts Commission is developing a Central Subway Arts Master Plan to guide public art opportunities and priorities at the Central Subway stations, which will be located in Chinatown, Union Square/Market Street, and Moscone Center/Yerba Buena. The public art goal for the Central Subway is to create a strong visual identity for each subway station and adjacent vicinity that reflects the diverse Central Subway transit corridor neighborhoods.

Arts Commission staff will ask the public at each of the meetings for their ideas about the placement of artwork at the stations, as well as possible themes and aesthetic approaches for the artworks, among other questions. A questionnaire will be distributed at the meeting to guide the discussion.

The SFAC Public Art Program

The Arts Commission’s Public Art Program was established by City ordinance in 1969, as one of the first of its kind in the country. The Public Art Program seeks to promote a diverse and stimulating cultural environment to enrich the lives of the City’s residents, visitors and employees. The program encourages the creative interaction of artists, designers, City staff, officials and community members during the design of City projects in order to develop public art that is specific to the site and meaningful to the community.

The San Francisco Arts Commission

Established by charter in 1932, the San Francisco Arts Commission is the City agency that champions the arts in San Francisco. Led by the belief that a creative cultural environment is essential to the City’s well-being, the Arts Commission programs permeate all aspects of City life from the murals and monuments under the care of the Civic Art Collection to the dance and theater productions funded by Cultural Equity Grants, to the new generation of teen poets cultivated by the WritersCorps program.