McEvoy Foundation for the Arts

If you haven't yet made plans to visit Lessons of the Hour before it closes on April 24, now's a good time! We've added more advance and walk-up reservations each hour, WednesdaySaturday, 11am6pm. For your health and safety, McEvoy Arts continues to operate at a significantly reduced capacity below the 50% mandated for indoor spaces by the state's orange tier. https://www.eventbrite.com/e/lessons-of-the-hour-at-mcevoy- Installation view, Lessons of the Hour, McEvoy Arts, San Francisco. Photo: Henrik Kam

Elegance Bratton and Jovan James' "Buck" (2020) is on view at McEvoy Arts through April 24, curated by Leila Weefur (@spikeleila) for 'New Labor Movements.' Each #FilmFriday through the end of the exhibition we'll be highlighting another film in "Movement III. Freedom/Liberation". Plan your visit at our #linkinbio. "To be gay, black, and looking for relief. The leading young man, Lynn, is looking to sex to free him from a psychological paralysis and refusal to heal. His... journey only reveals to him what many already know, the search for joy and happiness is complicated and cannot be realized in isolation. Directors, Elegance Bratton & Jovan James, guide us through the process of surrendering to the difficulties of acceptance." Leila Weefur Elegance Bratton, Jovan James, Buck, 2020. Digital video, color sound, 14 min. Courtesy of the artists See more

NEXT TO YOU May 28 December 4, 2021 We are pleased to announce our next exhibition, #NextToYou, featuring photography, painting, and sculpture from the McEvoy Family Collection that celebrate the joy, vitality, and healing power of the performing arts. The exhibition, along with related screenings and events to be announced, showcases dance, theater, music, circus arts, film, and other creative forms. As the world emerges from the pandemic and its requisite isolation,... 'Next to You' is a secret reverie for those longing for the energy of a crowd and a meditative space for recovering long dormant senses as a new world unfolds. Featured artists include #MammaAndersson, #IlseBing, #Brassaï, #FrancisCape, #SqueakCarnwath, #CharlesGaines, #ChristineSunKim, #LisetteModel, #EadweardMuybridge, #IrvingPenn, #ThomasRuff, #MalickSidibé, #HiroshiSugimoto, #LavaThomas and more. Learn more: https://www.mcevoyarts.org/exhibition/next-to-you/

Writing for Squarecylinder.com, Renny Pritikin takes a deep look at the San Francisco Art Institute's 150th anniversary exhibition, A Spirit of Disruption, curated by Margaret Tedesco and Leila Weefur. We're so pleased to see two extraodinary curators engaging critically and creatively with the legacy of this important institution. Weefur's #NewLaborMovements film series remains on view at McEvoy Arts through April 24! https://www.mcevoyarts.org/exhibition/new-labor-movements/

We're honored to see 'Lessons of the Hour' by Isaac Julien included in the San Francisco Chronicle's year-end review of art highlights in the Bay Area. We look forward to welcoming our visitors back to the galleries to experience the exhibition soon. As the year comes to a close, we want to express our gratitude to everyone who made seeing and supporting the arts part of their 2020 actions. Through seismic changes in our communities and beyond, the arts have persisted as an important window into ourselves. Our deepest thanks to the artists, partners, staff, and visitors who make exploration and discussion at McEvoy Arts possible.

There's just one day left to catch New Labor Movements I and II streaming online with the Roxie Theater. Don't miss your chance to discover curator Leila Weefur's moving and eclectic collection of short films that trace a cinematic, corporeal, temporal, and political relationship to movement. @spikeleila Get your s at our #linkinbio. Sales close at 10:30pm tomorrow evening. Streaming ends at midnight on December 24. 1. Lonnie Holley, Cyrus Moussavi, I Snuck Off t...he Slave Ship, 2019 2. Onyeka Igwe, Specialised Technique, 2018 3. Morgan Quaintance, South, 2020 4. Eden Tinto Collins, Adrien Gystere Peskine, Womxn, 2018 5. Christopher Harris, Halimuhfack, 2016 6. Mitch McCabe, Civil War Surveillance Poems (Part 1), 2019 See more

McEvoy Arts is thrilled to partner with @museumofcraftanddesign and artist Erica Deeman to offer "In Our Likeness" (2020), a fun, free at-home art project about portraiture. Created by Deeman as a safe and educational activity for children, teens, and families in a shared household, the "In Our Likeness" kits include instructions, supplies, and prompts for experimenting with photography. One hundred kits were distributed at NOW Hunters Point’s Christmas Tree Giveaway this wee...kend. Recipients are empowered to explore their own agency and innate creativity in the act of self-representation. Deeman, whose multidisciplinary practice intersects race, gender, and the hybridity of Black identity, takes inspiration for the project from Isaac Julien’s immersive Lessons of the HourFrederick Douglass (2019). "In Our Likeness" embraces Douglass’ ideals of photography’s potential to act as a means of liberation. A series of artist-designed prompts give tips on subject matter, framing, lighting. Using the frame as a point of departure, the project provides historical information about Douglass and the medium to build joy and curiosity in the personal surroundings of each participant. Read more about the commission at the link in our profile! [A vintage frame photographed by Erica Deeman, included as a poster in the In Our Likeness Mobile MakeArt Kits. Courtesy of the artist] See more

I had an emotional response to seeing a figure like Frederick Douglass reincarnated through Isaac Julien’s narrative and vision, Weefur said. I often wondered what it felt like for the actor to play Frederick Douglass and about the mechanics of making the story. I’d never seen anything like it. When you watch as much video as I do, you see things repeat themselves, but Isaac doesn’t do that. Check out more from this conversation between New Labor Movements curator Leila Weefur and Emily Wilson, writing for 48 Hills and don't miss your chance to discover "New Labor Movements I and II" from home through December 24 in partnership with the Roxie Theater.

#FromOurPartners: Introducing ‘Our Skin Is a Monument I’ a new limited edition for Frieze by renowned British artist John Akomfrah. The edition builds on the artist’s work since the 1980s. In support of the Frieze x Deutsche Bank Emerging Curators Fellowship, for UK-based Black and POC emerging curators. Collaborations are at the heart of McEvoy Arts' vision and today we're highlighting @frieze_magazine, our official media partner for 'Lessons of the Hour.' Head to the link in our bio to shop this edition and learn more about Frieze, a leading magazine of contemporary art and culture.

Tomorrow at 12pm artist #IsaacJulien is joined by editors and contributors to Film Quarterly for an online discussion about sensorial immersion and human rights in the artist’s moving-image practice. Register below to tune in!

We're moved by this remarkable review of "Time," a documentary by artist #GarrettBradley, whose film "AKA" is included in our current screening room program 'New Labor Movements.' The New York Times writes the film "stubbornly resists all the easy ways of thinking about incarceration in America." New Labor Movements curated by Oakland-based #LeilaWeefur is a series of short films that explore acts of movement as a profound catalyst for societal and individual change in Ameri...can and Black life. The program is organized into four parts that tend to the question "What is America today? as inspired by Lessons of the Hour, Isaac Julien’s immersive film and photographic exhibition on the life and legacy of Frederick Douglass. Movement I: Assembly and Movement II: Resistance/Selfhood screen daily at McEvoy Arts in 2020. Movements III and IV premiere in 2021.

Many thanks to Tony Bravo for including #LessonsOfTheHour in Datebook's Picks! Lessons of the Hour features a video installation and photography exhibition by British artist #IsaacJulien and a collection of short films curated by #LeilaWeefur in a resonant screening room program. McEvoy art is open for exploration Tuesday - Saturday, 11am-6pm. Advanced reservations are strongly encouraged.

On Wednesday, October 28 12pm, #IsaacJulien is joined by editors and contributors to Film Quarterly for an online discussion about sensorial immersion and human rights in the artist’s moving-image practice. Admission is free with registration! Register below.

#LessonsOfTheHour, an immersive video installation and contemplative journey through the life and legacy of #FrederickDouglass by #IsaacJulien is now on view at #McEvoyArts! Explore today.

Lessons of the Hour: Isaac Julien opens in just two days! Immerse yourself in the life and legacy of Frederick Douglass through a ten-screen video installation and photography exhibition. Make a timed-entry reservation and plan your visit today at the link below.

Bravo #DavidZwirner! We're thrilled to see fellow art institutions taking concerted steps towards equity and diversity.

Join us on December 11, 12pm for 'Abolition Then and Now' an online conversation between historian Robin Kelley and artist #IsaacJulien as they discuss the anti-slavery movements of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and current abolitionist uprisings against racist police brutality and the prison industrial complex. This event is one of several programs produced in conjunction with 'Lessons of the Hour,' opening October 14, 2020. Kelley is Distinguished Professor of History & Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair in U.S. History and a professor in the Department of African American Studies at University of California, Los Angeles. Admission is free with registration, RSVP at the link below.

Join us later this month for a conversation with #IsaacJulien joined by B. Ruby Rich, editor of Film Quarterly and professor emerita of Film & Digital Media and Social Documentation at University of California, Santa Cruz; Kass Banning, lecturer in the Cinema Studies Institute at the University of Toronto; and Warren Crichlow, associate professor at York University, Toronto to discuss 'Lessons of the Hour' which was the subject of Banning and Crichlow’s recently published article A Grand Panorama: Isaac Julien, Frederick Douglass, and Lessons of the Hour, Film Quarterly vol. 73, no. 4 (Summer): 1124. This event will take place on Zoom Wednesday, October 28 at 12pm. Admission is free with registration, secure your spot through the link below