Bregman claims, 'Today the whole of Europe risks turning into one big Venice, a beautiful open-air museum. A great destination for Chinese and American tourists. A place to admire what was once the centre of the world.' This statement encapsulates the concern that Europe is losing its cultural significance.
A true wellness gathering is something far more ancient and far more urgent: it's any intentional space where humans are invited to arrive whole, body, mind, spirit, and leave more alive than when they walked in. That's it. That's the whole definition.
This weekend sees the start of the 23rd San Francisco Greek Film Festival, which since 2004 has provided a local showcase for new screen work from the "cradle of Western civilization" still most associated with its contributions to arts and ideas in the ancient world. This latest edition brings together eight fictive features, sixteen documentaries of various length, and nine narrative shorts.
Keepers of the Steps, the living archive and cultural program at the United Irish Cultural Center dedicated to preserving generations of Bay Area Irish dancers, teachers, and families. Through stories, images, and lived experience, we'll reflect on how dance carries lineage, identity, and community forward.
The evening, spearheaded by directors Sam Bardouil and Till Fellrath alongside patrons Monique Burger and Christine Würfel-Strauss, arrived at a fraught moment for Berlin, whose cultural scene faces funding cuts of roughly €130 million.
Leigh Steinberg has worked for five decades as a sports agent, particularly in the NFL and most notably with franchise quarterbacks. He doesn't need to do celebrity name-dropping; the evidence is all around him. On his shelf is a picture of him with Barack Obama. There's one of him with Julia Roberts on the set of Ocean's Eleven.
The contemporary technology museum has emerged as a performative participant in the systems it seeks to document. The architecture of these institutions has become increasingly fluid and bold, often mirroring the velocity and complexity of the systems it houses. They operate as mediators between the human, the ecological, and the technological realms, transforming from encyclopedic warehouses into active educational engines.
Communities make museums and museums make communities. Part of the establishment of M+ was a public consultation where people were asked what kind of museums they wanted. The recommendation was not to build lots of little museums, but to create a big museum that was cross-disciplinary, unburdened by labels like "modern" or "contemporary". It was to be a museum plus more, and that was how we became M+.
In Italy, the most common topic mentioned as a source of national pride was culture and the arts. These were cited by 38 percent of respondents, more than any other place. An Italian woman who took part in the survey said she was proud of 'the works in the churches, paintings, sculpture ... most places in Italy have something beautiful.' An Italian man said that 'Italy is an open-air museum.'
Los Tigres del Norte are ready to greet their loyal Bay Area fans. The famed Mexican norteno act which kickstarted its career in San Jose way back in the mid-1960s brings its La Loteria Tour to San Francisco on Feb. 20. It's your chance to see one of the most important Bay Area bands of all time, one that has attracted fans around the globe with its brand of thoughtful corridos that speak to the Latinx and immigrant experience.
You can feel it in the fishing fleet hauled up on the beach, still part of daily life, and then a short walk away in bold contemporary spaces showing work that speaks far beyond the town. It shows up in events that belong to the people who live there; Jack in the Green spilling through the streets; Pirate Day turning the whole place into a shared act of play;
The Harlem Globetrotters are celebrating a milestone anniversary in 2026. The legendary basketball squad, which was founded in 1926, has been delighting sports fans and families now for a full century. So, you're invited to help the Globetrotters celebrate the occasion when they bring their 100 Years Tour to Northern California. It's your chance to witness one of the most famous sports/entertainment franchises of all time while being amazed by plenty of crazy trick shots, incredible no-look passes and humorous hi-jinks.
A socioeconomic duty on public bodies was included in 2010's Equality Act, but has never been enacted. Now Class Ceiling, a review from Manchester University, co-chaired by the former chief prosecutor Nazir Afzal, is calling for change. It wants class to be made a legally protected characteristic like race and sex (and several others), to address the class crisis in the arts not just in the north-west but across the UK.
an Act of Killing-style re-enactment of the 1919 conquest of the Adriatic city of what is now Rijeka by a rag-tag army assembled by the proto-fascist dandy-poet Gabriele D'Annunzio. It was precisely the kind of quirky cinematic gem that the European film awards should be there to champion: a film ignored by the main festivals, about an overlooked but relevant episode in history.
In recent years, food has taken on a renewed role within architecture, not simply as a program or typology, but as a shared spatial practice. Beyond restaurants or dining design, communal eating spaces are increasingly understood as environments where presence, ritual, and time intersect, allowing people to gather, stay, and coexist. In these settings, eating does not just happen within space; it actively shapes it, temporarily transforming ordinary, borrowed, or improvised environments into places of exchange.
In Arash Nassiri's new moving-image commission, an insect puppet drags itself across an empty marble floor, cast in eerie blue evening light. The scene is diffused through an enormous frosted-glass cubicle, refracting and distorting the images. That sense of distortion pervades the Tehran-born, Berlin-based Nassiri's first institutional solo exhibition, A Bug's Life, which opened last weekend at London's Chisenhale Gallery-and comprises a film set within a sculptural installation.
From Super Bowl fun to the return of a beloved conductor and the Odo akland Interfaith Gospel Choir, there is a lot to see and hear in the Bay Area this weekend and beyond. A stroke of luck for Swims fans Teddy Swims is set to headline the Super Bowl LX Tailgate Concert presented by NetApp the NFL's top pregame party at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara on Feb. 8.
As if demolishing the East Wing, gutting arts agencies, and slapping his name and face on several federal buildings weren't enough, the US president now wants to do away with a DC building known as the "Sistine Chapel of New Deal art." This week, we reported on a burgeoning campaign to save the Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building, which houses murals by Ben Shahn, Philip Guston, Seymour Fogel, and other major American artists. We will continue to follow this story.
"Working Arts Club was always going to exist outside of London because class issues in the art world are systemic not geographic," founder Meg Molloy, who works in London as a freelance communications consultant for the art world. "The need for what our network can do is widespread and going to Northern England felt like a natural next step in our operations."
Find what brings you joy with the kickoff of San Francisco Art Week, SF Sketchfest, and the Napa Lighted Art Festival this week. Engage in some art of your own at a mosaic-making class or find your next favorite thing at vintage shows this weekend. For a final dose of reflection, don't miss the send-off tribute to Claude on Sunday.
"The idea is that intention is not the whole story," says Selene Yap, a co-curator of the Biennale. "Systems can generate a certain kind of afterlife, and there are side effects." While the waterfall impresses, it also has consequences, she adds. The work uncovers how Singapore imports hydropower through transnational infrastructure, including the Vajiralongkorn Dam, whose construction has displaced Thailand's indigenous Karen hill tribe, forcing many to live in floating homes on the reservoir.