18 Mar 2011

People's Gallery opening in San Francisco

People's Gallery opening in San Francisco

The People's Gallery is a gallery organized by Jana Blankenship, Harrell Fletcher and Jens Hoffmann located in the Mission district of San Francisco. The gallery will run from March 2011 to February 2012 and will present six exhibitions over the course of that period. The People's Gallery is an extension of Fletcher's and Hoffmann's People's Biennial, a large group exhibition that brings together artists and art works from five distinct American cities: Portland, Winston-Salem, Haverford, Scottsdale and Rapid City. The six artists that will be presented as part of the People's Gallery program are all participating in the People's Biennial. The People's Gallery functions as a platform to look in depth into the work of these six artists and give them the opportunity to develop a whole solo exhibition under fully professional conditions. The name of the gallery has two points of departure: One being Howard Zinn's classic publication A People's History of the United States that tells the history of the US from the perspective of the disenfranchised, the discriminated, the excluded and marginalized. The other is Group Material's 1981 exhibition People's Choice in New York, an exhibition with material from residents that live on the block Group Material's storefront space was located on.