San Francisco Offers Three Charms in Bid to Make Fair Circuit

Before last year's San Francisco Fine Art Fair (SFFAF), the city's most recent fair was the 2005 International Art Exhibition (SFIAE), put on by Blackman & Associates. But this month [May 19–22], San Francisco gets three simultaneous fairs: artMRKT, the first event put on by upstart artMRKT productions; the second annual SFFAF, organized by Hamptons Expo Group (HEG); and another newcomer, ArtPadSF. Each offers robust auxiliary programming.

While there will be galleries from all points U.S. and beyond, this will be a particularly good opportunity to experience local galleries; of the 164 galleries exhibiting at the three fairs, 86 are from the Bay Area, and primarily San Francisco. The outstanding questions are: Will the city draw enough attendance to support three fairs? And why San Francisco, why now?
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The Secret War: Q+A With Lynn Hershman Leeson

For over 40 years, pioneering artist and filmmaker Lynn Hershman Leeson has videotaped interviews of the influential people around her. These form the basis of her recently produced, soon-to-see-release !Women Art Revolution! A (Formerly) Secret History (!W.A.R.). The film premiered last year at the Toronto International Film Festival  and recently played a packed run at the Berlin International Film Festival.

According to Hershman Leeson, W.A.R. is the first movie to tell the history of the American feminist art movement, dating from the mid-'60s to the present.
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Grotjahn Goes Big at SFMOMA Benefit Auction

Over 450 of San Francisco Museum of Modern Art's (SFMOMA) supporters gathered Wednesday night to toast champagne, nibble caviar and bid on the 90 artworks available at the 2011 Art Auction fundraiser. The event, sponsored by the Modern Art Council, SFMoMA's women's auxiliary, grossed just over $2 million.

Festivities began in the museum's Schwab Room, where guests, including philanthropists Charles and Helen Schwab, previewed the 25 live auction items and bid on the 65 silent auction pieces. The art doubled as both funding source and to highlight museum interests; most works were by artists represented in the permanent collection or otherwise supported by the institution: Matthew Barney, Trevor Paglen, Tauba Auerbach, Olafur Eliasson, Barry McGee, and Glenn Ligon. Several artists created work especially for the event, including Mel Bochner, Ewan Gibbs, Mark Grotjahn, and Katharina Fritsch.
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Deborah Oropallo's Atypical Archetypes

Deborah Oropallo's "Tale Spin" at Gallery 16 in San Francisco is a big, bold show of female fairy-tale characters and other alluring archetypes—Snow White, Goldie Locks, the French maid and the Catholic schoolgirl, among others. Each of these collaged pieces amounts to an almost life-size full figure or portrait, comprising layered pieces of sheer material, each with a part of a figure printed on it. The figure is made up of about 10 sourced images, sourced from costume websites, which are assembled and mounted on paper to form a single woman. Gas masks and bondage accessories also appear-these are characters facing today's world.
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