2025 Art on Market Street Poster Series

The 2025 Art on Market Street Poster Series will showcase the over 30 year history of the Art on Market Street Poster Series. The works are curated through a lens of “People, Places, and Things,” reflecting historical events, notable individuals, everyday people, art, and architecture that are significant to San Francisco’s cultural and physical landscape. This project intersects with the continued work of SFAC’s Shaping Legacy program by calling attention to underrepresented communities and overlooked histories. 

For the third and final group of posters, the concept of “Things” was thought to be more open-ended and includes posters on: an imagined landscape, historical events, an artwork in the Civic Art Collection, a single color, and a weed portrait.



“Why are there so many Pigeons?” from the 1997 series titled What are Pigeons For? by Anne Veraldi, Tomas Nakada, and Clancy Cavnar. The posters series dispelled myths and answered frequently asked questions regarding the humble yet ubiquitous San Francisco denizen, the pigeon.*

 

 

“#529” from the 1999 series by Amy Berk and Hope Cox. All the posters from this series were of a single solid color. The artists' thought it important to render the color field as smoothly and as vibrant as possible and much consideration was put into the type of paper and printing method for the original installation.

 

“Cerrado” from the 1999 series by Margaret Kilgallen. The poster series featured images of people shopping, waiting for the bus, and engaging in other routine activity that reflected Kilgallen’s personal observations of end-of-the-century Market Street. One of the more popular poster series in Art on Market Street history, Kilgallen's posters were famously swiped from the kiosks they were installed in by her loyal and devoted fans.   

 

“2020 Market Street” from the 2001 series Weeds by Jon Rubin. The six posters in this series spotlighted six weeds growing in different locations along Market Street and celebrated the determination of nature to survive in a concrete environment.*

 

“Demon of Market Street” from the 2002 series titled The Crabtrees of Old San Francisco by JRR Blevins. Blevin's six original poster designs recounted mythical narratives inspired by Lotta Crabtree, a famous San Franciscan performer, who's also known for commissioning Lotta’s Fountain in 1875 as a gift to the City.*

 

“Untitled” from the 2003 series titled Aerial by Robert Gutierrez. The images from this series are of abstract urban islands showing a mixture of architectural, natural, and other references to life on Market Street.*

 

“Long ago – 1880” from the 2011 series titled Once Upon a Time by Elishiva Biernhoff, which focused on various eras and phases the city has gone through and how the landscape changed over the years, what has vanished, been covered over, and what remains.

 

 

“Expand” from the 2012 series titled Transform, Reveal, Challenge, Expand, Imagine, Celebrate by Julie Chang. Using the language of pattern, each poster was layered with images and icons that were abstracted or hidden in order to create an experience of discovery. This work references the Asian Art Museum, Artists Television Access, the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, the Opera, the Symphony, and ODC dance Commons.

“Occupy” from the 2013 series by Sanaz Mazinani. This series was inspired by the rich lineage of social activism in San Francisco. The poster here combines historical photographs from the 1964 Occupation of Alcatraz and imagery from the 2011 Occupy Movement in San Francisco rendered in her signature kaleidoscopic style.

 

“Noah and His Ark” from the 2015 series The City as Museum: Highlighting Works in the Civic Art Collection by Anthony Discenza. The artist created 36 unique posters and wrote descriptive text on works in San Francisco’s Civic Art Collection. This poster highlights the frescoes created in 1938 by Helen Forbes and Dorothy Wagner Puccinell. which are located in the Mother's Building at the San Francisco Zoo.  

“Invasion” from the 2015 titled Iconic City Hall by Kelly Inouye. The 2015 Art on Market Street poster series celebrated the centennial of San Francisco’s City Hall and Inouye’s posters referenced several movies that have scenes shot within and around City Hall, such as Dirty Harry, The Times of Harvey Milk, and, as seen in this poster, Invasion of the Body Snatchers. 
 

 

"Transcendent" from Tracey Snelling’s 2016 series Best Seller, which addressed utopian ideas of a future Market Street, using the trope of pulp fiction book covers.*

 

“1967: Artistic Paths that Crossed” from the 2017 series titled In Circulation by Sarah Hotchkiss. The poster shows all arts-related material, all printed in 1967 and taken from Bay Area publications, including the Black Panther Newsletter, San Francisco Chronicle, and the lesbian monthly The Ladder.

 

"Guatemala Folsom" from Miguel Arzabe’s 2018 Entretejido (Interwoven). For this series, Arzabe pays homage to La Raza Screenprint Center and Mission Gráfica, sourcing historical posters from their respective archives to reflect the City’s inclusivity. After reproducing the images, he cut them into strips and wove them together by hand. This work shows a weaving made from reproductions of two posters: one for a dance to benefit Guatemala printed in the 70s and another for the Folsom Street Fair printed in the 80s, and will be on view during this year’s Folsom Street Fair. 

“First Pride, 1970” from the 2020 series titled Marching Toward Pride by Justin Hall. For this series, graphically depicted pivotal moments in San Francisco LGBTQ history during the 15 years leading up to (and including) the City’s first Pride Parade. The First Pride poster features quotes from famous LGBTQ San Franciscans, including: Jose Sarria, Del Martin, Lani Ka'ahumanu, and Marlon Riggs. 

 

*not reprinted for this installation but shown here to highlight the breadth and depth of the over 30 year history of the Art on Market Street Poster Series.