San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 808,988 residents as of 2023, San Francisco is the fourth most populous city in the U.S. state of California behind Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Jose. The city covers a land area of 46.9 square miles at the upper end of the San Francisco Peninsula, making it the second-most densely populated major U.S. city behind New York City and the fifth-most densely populated U.S. county, behind four of New York City's boroughs. Among the 92 U.S. cities proper with over 250,000 residents, San Francisco is ranked first by per capita income and sixth by aggregate income as of 2022.As of 2023, the San Jose–San Francisco–Oakland, CA CSA is the 5th largest in the nation, with an approximate population of over 9,001,024.
Alcatraz Island is a small island 1.25 miles (2.01 km) offshore from San Francisco, California, United States. The island was developed in the mid-19th century with facilities for a lighthouse, a military fortification, and a military prison. In 1934, the island was converted into a federal prison, Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary. The strong currents around the island and cold water temperatures made escape nearly impossible, and the prison became one of the most notorious in American history. The prison closed in 1963, and the island is now a major tourist attraction.
Yerba Buena Island sits in San Francisco Bay within the borders of the City and County of San Francisco. The Yerba Buena Tunnel runs through its center and connects the western and eastern spans of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge, linking the city with Oakland, California. Treasure Island is connected by a causeway to Yerba Buena Island. According to the United States Census Bureau, Yerba Buena Island and Treasure Island together have a land area of 0.901 square miles (2.33 km2) with a total population of 2,500 as of the 2010 census.
The San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge, commonly referred to as the Bay Bridge, is a complex of bridges spanning San Francisco Bay in California. As part of Interstate 80 and the direct road between San Francisco and Oakland, it carries about 260,000 vehicles a day on its two decks. It includes one of the longest bridge spans in the United States.
The Financial District is a neighborhood in San Francisco, California, United States, that serves as its main central business district and had 372,829 jobs according to U.S. census tracts as of 2012-2016. It is home to the city's largest concentration of corporate headquarters, law firms, insurance companies, real estate firms, savings and loan banks, and other financial institutions. Multiple Fortune 500 companies headquartered in San Francisco have their offices in the Financial District, including Wells Fargo, Salesforce, and Gap.
The George R. Moscone Convention Center, popularly known as the Moscone Center, is the largest convention and exhibition complex in San Francisco, California, United States. The complex consists of three main halls spread out across three blocks and 87 acres (35 ha) in the South of Market neighborhood. The convention center originally opened in 1981. It is named after former San Francisco mayor George Moscone, who was assassinated in November 1978.
Ai Weiwei is a Chinese contemporary artist, documentarian, and activist. Ai grew up in the far northwest of China, where he lived under harsh conditions due to his father's exile. As an activist, he has been openly critical of the Chinese Government's stance on democracy and human rights. He investigated government corruption and cover-ups, in particular the Sichuan schools corruption scandal following the collapse of "tofu-dreg schools" in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. In April 2011, Ai Weiwei was arrested at Beijing Capital International Airport for "economic crimes," and detained for 81 days without charge. Ai Weiwei emerged as a vital instigator in Chinese cultural development, an architect of Chinese modernism, and one of the nation's most vocal political commentators.
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) is a multi-disciplinary contemporary arts center in San Francisco, California, United States. Located in Yerba Buena Gardens, YBCA features visual art, performance, and film/video that celebrates local, national, and international artists and the Bay Area's diverse communities. YBCA programs year-round in two landmark buildings—the Galleries and Forum by Japanese architect Fumihiko Maki and the adjacent Theater by American architect James Stewart Polshek and Todd Schliemann. Betti-Sue Hertz served as Curator from 2008 through 2015.
Bill Daniel is an American experimental documentary film artist, photographer, film editor, and cinematographer. He is also an installation artist, curator, and former zine publisher. His full-length film, Who is Bozo Texino? about the tradition of hobo and railworker boxcar graffiti was completed in 2005 and has screened extensively throughout the United States and Europe. Daniel has collaborated with several artists from the Bay Area Mission School art movement, notably Margaret Kilgallen and has worked on multiple projects with underground director Craig Baldwin. Film/video artist Rankin Renwick of the Oregon Department of Kick Ass has been a frequent touring partner, collaborator and co-curator.
The Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy is a nonprofit cooperating association that supports park stewardship and conservation in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area—the most visited national park in the U.S.
Erika Chong Shuch is an American theatrical performer, director, choreographer, and educator based in San Francisco, California. Her work has appeared on stages in the San Francisco Bay Area, Washington, DC, and Seoul, South Korea.
The Global Lives Project is a nonprofit organization consisting of volunteer filmmakers and photographers, programmers and engineers, architects and designers, students and scholars. The mission of the organization is to collaboratively build a video library of human life experience that reshapes how individuals conceive of cultures, nations and people outside of their own communities.
Mail Order Brides/M.O.B. is a Filipina American artist trio active since 1995 and known for their use of humor and camp to explore issues of culture and gender. Founded in San Francisco by artists Eliza Barrios, Reanne Estrada, and Jenifer K. Wofford, the group's full name, Mail Order Brides/M.O.B., conflates a once-common stereotype of Filipina women as "mail order brides" with an acronym suggestive of an organized crime organization. The group has often been referred to in shorthand as "M.O.B.".
Weston Teruya is an Oakland-based visual artist and arts administrator. Teruya's paper sculptures, installations, and drawings reconfigure symbols forming unexpected meanings that tamper with social/political realities, speculating on issues of power, control, visibility, protection and, by contrast, privilege. With Michele Carlson and Nathan Watson, he is a member of the Related Tactics artists' collective and often exhibits under that name.
Jenifer K. Wofford is an American contemporary artist and art educator based in San Francisco, California, United States. Known for her contributions to Filipino-American visual art, Wofford's work often addresses hybridity, authenticity and global culture, frequently from an ironic, humorous perspective. Wofford collaborates with artists Reanne Estrada and Eliza Barrios as the artist group Mail Order Brides/M.O.B. She was also the curator of Galleon Trade, an international art exchange among California, Mexico and the Philippines.
Kui Hua Zi (Sunflower Seeds) is an art installation created by contemporary artist and political activist Ai Weiwei. It was first exhibited at the Tate Modern art gallery in London from 12 October 2010 to 2 May 2011. The work consisted of one hundred million individually hand-crafted porcelain sunflower seeds which filled the gallery's 1,000 square metre Turbine Hall to depth of ten centimetres.
Ai Weiwei: Yours Truly is a 2019 American documentary film about the Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei, and his art exhibition at Alcatraz, a former prison on an island near San Francisco, California, USA.
Connie Zheng is a Chinese-born artist, writer, and filmmaker based in Oakland, California. Her projects include large-scale maps, seed exchanges, seed-making workshops, and experimental films about seeds. Themes in Zheng's work include navigating diasporic memory, ecological transformation, and relationships between human and more-than-human worlds.
Raheleh "Minoosh" Zomorodinia is an Iranian-born American interdisciplinary visual artist, curator, and educator. She works in many mediums, including in photography, video, installation, and performance. Her work is informed by the tension between Iran and the United States, as well as explorations of the self, of home, nature, and the environment. She is based in the San Francisco Bay Area.
