Glass artist Dean Bensen has been living amid Northern California redwoods for most of his life. It's only been recently, though, that he's really appreciated them. "I've been going in a new direction with my work," Bensen says, "gotten more into preservation...

Underground art galleries serve a special niche

SFGate: Art

Across the Bay Area, hidden in nooks and crannies, is a whole constellation of guerrilla galleries. Some exist only for a night; others stick around for years. In addition to warehouse live-work art venues, such as the Mission District's Million Fishes and...

Wellesley museum under fire after art mishap

SFGate: Art

After reports surfaced that Wellesley College's Davis Museum may have unintentionally thrown out a prized 1921 painting by French cubist Fernand Léger, President H. Kim Bottomly promised that new controls will be in place by October to better protect the...

A bargain for Titian masterpiece: $92 million

SFGate: Art

A British aristocrat is offering two public art galleries a $92 million bargain: a Renaissance painting by the Italian artist Titian that has been on display in Britain for 200 years but now could be sold overseas. "Diana and Actaeon," one of Titian's...

'When Holy Were the Haunted Forest Boughs'

SFGate: Art

Artist Christine Shields, a native Californian, doesn't just see sunshine in the Golden State. Even in scenic Nevada City, where she grew up, there is a dark side to the Gold Rush. "I think I've always been attracted to the contrasts," Shields says. For her...

In Denver, artists get creative for Obama

SFGate: Art

In a scruffy gallery topped with the word "HOPE" sculpted out of bike wheels, some of the biggest names in street art are displaying work inspired by Barack Obama's presidential campaign. The Manifest Hope Gallery is camped out in Andenken Gallery and an...

Appreciation: Manny Farber

SFGate: Art

Manny Farber, who died Monday at 91 at his home in Leucadia, near San Diego, was a shining star in parallel universes. Mention his painting to someone in the film world and you're likely to hear "He also painted?" Speak of his movie criticism in the art world...

Lee Miller's work on both sides of the camera

SFGate: Art

"The Art of Lee Miller" at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has the clean, spacious staging and authoritative catalog we expect of a retrospective. Yet it provokes an almost forbidden question: Had Lee Miller not been a celebrated beauty who worked the...

'Human's Nature': A 'personal re-eduction'

SFGate: Art

San Diego artist Mike Maxwell doesn't equivocate on the man-versus-nature debate. Nature wins, hands down, all the time. It would be foolish to think otherwise. "The title of the show is 'Human's Nature,' and the work in the show is about human's own...

Nathan Oliveira sculptures in Palo Alto

SFGate: Art

Living most of his life on the West Coast has sidelined Nathan Oliveira from the dialogue between Europe and New York since 1965 about sculpture as a vehicle of historical and human truth. As the powerful survey of his bronzes at the Palo Alto Art Center...

Leonardo as matchmaker?

SFGate: Art

Born 500 years too early to put her photo on an online dating site, this young woman tried a different matchmaking approach: a portrait by Leonardo da Vinci. Experts say a little-known portrait of a young woman, previously attributed to an anonymous German...

Art collector buys David Ireland's house

SFGate: Art

David Ireland's house at 500 Capp St., San Francisco - a contemporary art site like no other - has been saved. Carlie Wilmans, granddaughter of arts benefactor Phyllis Wattis (1914-2002), and director of the Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation, personally bought the...

The economics of the art fair

SFGate: Art

Several art dealers have told me in recent years that they foresee a time when art fairs will make the retail gallery financially impractical. This strikes me as a dire, even if implausible, forecast, considering the largely unacknowledged public service that...

Lawyer faces charges of trafficking stolen masterpieces

SFGate: Art

At first, nothing seemed out of place when Michael Bakwin returned to his home in the Berkshires after he and his family went away for Memorial Day weekend in 1978. But the next day, Bakwin's wife walked into the dining room and saw that seven paintings had...

Art review: 'Spared From the Storm'

SFGate: Art

Visitors to "Spared From the Storm: Masterworks From the New Orleans Museum of Art" at Stanford may leave with mixed feelings of relief and anger: relief and gladness that the museum's staff secured the preservation of so many wonderful art objects during...

Review: Diebenkorn show traces long friendship

SFGate: Art

The intimate but intense presentation of Richard Diebenkorn's work that charts friendship between the artist and Carey Stanton at Stanford's Cantor Center closes a circle. Diebenkorn (1922-1993), a painter who helped to define Bay Area sensibility before and...

Bay Area's best new art, now / YBCA overview offers snapshot of everything from paintings to video

SFGate: Art

Few can resist the prospect, realistic or not, of an overview of the local cultural landscape. This guarantees "Bay Area Now 5" at Yerba Buena Center a high level of audience interest. The fifth edition of the YBCA's triennial snapshot of regional art...

A family album of contemporary art from China

SFGate: Art

"Half-Life of a Dream: Contemporary Chinese Art From the Logan Collection," which opened at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art on Thursday, reacquaints us with some of the works and artists represented in the 1999 fractional gifts by Kent and Vicki Logan...

Asian showcases 'Power and Glory' of Ming era

SFGate: Art

As all eyes turn toward Beijing with the 2008 Olympic Games approaching, the Asian Art Museum led a chain of China-related events in Bay Area institutions with the opening Friday of "Power and Glory: Court Arts of China's Ming Dynasty." This grand show...

Review: 'Frida Kahlo' at SFMOMA

SFGate: Art

"Frida Kahlo," the beautifully presented retrospective that opens today at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, leaves us to answer why her posthumous renown has eclipsed that of her husband, Diego Rivera. Certainly, art by women has gained a credence...