In March, following the unexpected closure of the Fine Arts Museums, The de Young Open and a call for submissions were announced and, beginning in June, local artists were encouraged to submit recent or newly created work to the exhibition through an online portal. An impressive 11,514 artworks submitted by 6,188 artists from across the nine Bay Area counties.
Every artwork image was reviewed anonymously multiple times by a group of qualified jurors who did not know the identities of the artists. The jurors included four Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco curators in charge and three prominent Bay Area artists: Mildred Howard, Hung Liu, and Enrique Chagoya. Given the space limitations in our main exhibition galleries, the seven jurors were faced with the challenging task of selecting and accepting less than 8 percent of all the works submitted.
The Museums want to thank every artist who submitted works for enriching the Bay Area’s cultural landscape, as well as that of the United States. The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco would not exist without the talented artists whose works make our very existence possible.
We promise to carry on the mission of engaging with our local artistic communities through projects like The de Young Open, and look forward to welcoming artists—and all of our community members—back to the de Young as soon as it is safe to gather again in person.
