For the exhibition, I’ve brought together 22 artists who represent different moments in the gallery’s history, including Emily Prince, the very first artist we showed when we opened in 2006.
Running a gallery is a deeply personal project. You work with artists and their work at moments that can be incredibly vulnerable, and somehow that exists alongside the much more prosaic business of keeping the doors open: taxes, bookkeeping, sales, expenses, shipping, insurance. I’ll tell you a secret: I actually like the business part. There is something satisfying about it because, for the most part, you can get it “right.” The art part is much harder to define. It’s intuitive, subjective and occasionally mysterious.
People have asked me for twenty years what kind of work the gallery shows, and my answer has remained essentially the same: whatever I like.
It may not sound like the most profound curatorial philosophy, but I’ve come to think there is something quite profound about sticking to it. The art world moves in waves. Certain kinds of work become fashionable, certain ideas suddenly seem to be everywhere, and it can be very tempting to show what you think people want to see—or what you think will sell.
But a gallery built that way eventually stops feeling like anything in particular. I’ve always wanted this gallery to have a personality, some kind of tactile identity that people might recognize in their gut even if they can’t quite articulate it. After twenty years, I know pretty well what draws me to a work of art. I like excellence. I like evidence of an extremely practiced hand, not necessarily something intricate or laborious, but the confidence that comes from having done something so many times that the hand itself has developed a language.
I’ve also come to understand how much being a regional gallery matters to me. All of the artists we show have roots in the Bay Area, and over time that has created something larger than an exhibition program. It has created a community. I love that the artists know one another. I love that they meet at openings and bring their friends, their children and their dogs. I love that people who first encountered one another through the gallery have gone on to become friends and colleagues. There is a lot in contemporary life that can feel disconnected and strangely devoid of meaning, and community is one of the things that pushes against that.
Being regional may mean we are not chasing artists who have already made their names elsewhere, but that has never seemed particularly interesting to me. What interests me is participating in the cultural ecosystem that exists right here: artists, collectors, curators, consultants, framers, photographers, art handlers, writers and all the other people whose work makes an art community possible.
We all get to play some small part in creating the world we live in. After twenty years, I’m happy to say that I think the gallery has left its little corner of that world better than we found it. Art isn’t a panacea. But it can be a cure for loneliness. It can provide beauty, connection, inspiration and joy. And what is life without those things?
Over the past two decades, Eleanor Harwood Gallery has mounted more than 140 exhibitions and worked with hundreds of artists. The gallery began in 2006 in an off-the-beaten-track storefront in San Francisco’s Outer Mission, with a hair salon occupying the back half of the space. When the salon moved out, artist studios took its place; eventually, the gallery expanded into the entire building and the exhibition program grew with it.
In 2016, Eleanor Harwood Gallery moved to the Minnesota Street Project, bringing the program and its artists to a much wider audience. In September 2023, the gallery expanded again into its current ground-floor space.
Twenty years after that first exhibition, the anniversary show brings together:
James Chronister, Joe Ferriso, Mary Finlayson, Bryson Gill, Dana Hemenway, Kira Dominguez Hultgren, Janet Jacobs, Martin Machado, Lee Materazzi, Kirk Maxson, Carmen McNall, David Muller, Francesca Pastine, Carissa Potter, Emily Prince, Chris Russell, Hunter Saxony III, David Stein, Jill Sylvia, Tiffanie Turner, Paul Wackers, and David Wilson.
The exhibition is both a look back and, more importantly, a celebration of the artists and community that made twenty years possible.
