By Paul Duclos
Published: July, 2010
Majestic celestial palaces. Sprawling Mongolian grasslands. Cascading clouds. And that’s just the backdrop.
For a limited run at the San Francisco Opera House from July 23-25, Shen Yun Performing Arts will be staging an elaborate—and by some accounts a somewhat riotous—dance show with full orchestra.
Based in New York, Shen Yun Performing Arts is a nonprofit organization that seeks to revive the 5,000-year-old artistic tradition of China that thrived before decades of repression by the Communist party. Shen Yun has already graced many of the world’s greatest stages, including New York’s Radio City Music Hall, London’s Royal Festival Hall, Washington’s Kennedy Center, and Paris’ Le Palais de Congrès.
According to organizers, the company “seeks to breathe new life into traditional Chinese culture.” This explains the set: Some of the backdrops begin as a painting; some are created digitally. Many are animated, allowing flower petals to sweep gently across fields and snow to fall. Come showtime, each is manually operated to integrate precisely with the rhythms of the performance.
No less visually sublime is the first public presentation of the celebrated Fisher Collection, one of the world’s foremost private collections of contemporary art. This highly anticipated exhibition is presented by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) through September 19.
SFMOMA recently announced an unprecedented partnership with Doris and the late Donald Fisher, founders of the Gap, to provide a home at the museum for their outstanding collection of more than 1,100 works, most of which have never been displayed publicly. This sweeping exhibition, “Calder to Warhol: Introducing the Fisher Collection,” will offer an extraordinary preview of the depth, breadth, and quality of the Fisher holdings, with iconic works by Alexander Calder, Chuck Close, Sam Francis, Philip Guston, Anselm Kiefer, Ellsworth Kelly, Roy Lichtenstein, Brice Marden, Agnes Martin, Joan Mitchell, Gerhard Richter, Richard Serra, Wayne Thiebaud, Cy Twombly, Andy Warhol and many others. It will also serve as the centerpiece of SFMOMA’s yearlong 75th anniversary celebration and exhibition series in 2010, called “75 Years of Looking Forward.”
Organized by Gary Garrels, the Elise S. Haas Senior Curator of Painting and Sculpture at SFMOMA, “Calder to Warhol: Introducing the Fisher Collection” will provide a window into the vast collection assembled by the Fishers over more than four decades. The entire fourth and fifth floors of the museum, including the rooftop garden, will showcase approximately 160 works of painting, sculpture, photography, and video—a distillation of the Fisher Collection that aims to reveal not only its scope but also its core attributes. Unlike most private collections, it includes extensive groupings of seminal pieces by 20th century masters and traces their creative evolution through entire bodies of work.
Finally, the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, the largest and most important festival of its kind in North America, will celebrate its 15th Anniversary Festival at the Castro Theatre, itself a majestic silent-era movie palace, this July 15-18.
Since 1996, the Silent Film Festival has dazzled audiences with films from the silent era that exemplify its motto: “True art transcends time.” Bringing to light beloved classics and new discoveries, the festival takes great care to secure the best prints and present the films on the big screen as they were made to be seen. And remember that these films were never intended to be presented in silence; the Silent Film Festival enlists the talents of an extraordinary collection of musicians from around the world to accompany each movie.
2010 sees the festival expanding from three days to four, with the addition of more films (representing seven countries), more musicians, and a very special program we’re calling Variations on a Theme—a presentation that will highlight the creative process that goes into composing music for silent films—with all the festival musicians participating, moderated by a surprise guest. For more info, see www.silentfilm.org.
