544 Capp Street | Community Music Center (with Reception to follow at 500 Capp St)
Saturday, June 27, 2026

Doors Open at 5:30 PM
Talk begins at 6:00 PM with reception at 500 Capp St to follow until 8 PM

Toward a History of Bay Area Contemporary Art 1969-2004

The inaugural conversation in the Constance Lewallen Legacy Series

500 Capp Street is proud to present Toward a History of Bay Area Contemporary Art 1969-2004, a talk by the distinguished San Francisco curators and writers Renny Pritikin and Mark Dean Johnson. This program represents the launch of the Constance Lewallen Legacy Series, an annual program honoring one of the Bay Area’s most influential and beloved curators, whose consistently visionary work on California Conceptual art post-1960 uplifted hundreds of individual artists and demonstrated the significance of the West Coast at a time when the eyes of the art world were still fixated on New York.

The talk will take place at the San Francisco Community Music Center at 544 Capp Street—just down the block from the David Ireland House—on Saturday, June 27, 6pm. A reception will follow at 500 Capp Street.

Admission is free with RSVP.

Renny Pritikin was chief curator at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the Nelson Gallery and Fine Arts Collection at UC Davis, and the Contemporary Jewish Museum, after serving as co-Director at New Langton Arts. He was a senior adjunct professor in the graduate program in curatorial practice at CCA for twelve years and writes art criticism regularly for squarecylinder.com and Umbigo magazine in Lisbon, Portugal. His memoir At Third and Mission was published in 2023.

Mark Johnson is a curator, writer and Professor Emeritus at San Francisco State University. His books including Asian American Art: A History, 1850-1970 (2008; Stanford University Press) and When I Remember I See Red: American Indian Art and Activism in California (2019: UC Press).

Contact the host of CONSTANCE LEWALLEN LEGACY SERIES: CURATOR’S TALK