10 Must-See Exhibitions to See During San Francisco Art Week

From painting and performance to technology-driven and materially rooted practices, these exhibitions reflect the Bay Area’s singular relationship to landscape, innovation, and social inquiry.

As the first major art moment of the year, San Francisco Art Week sets the tone for what’s ahead. The week draws collectors, curators, and cultural travelers to the Bay Area, where mild winter weather, coastal light, and the pull of the Golden Gate frame a dense calendar of exhibitions and events, including FOG Design + Art. While the fairs anchor the schedule, some of the most compelling presentations unfold beyond the fairgrounds, inside galleries across the city’s neighborhoods, from the Minnesota Street Project to galleries including Jessica Silverman and Anthony Meier Gallery. Whitewaller compiles a selection of the most striking San Francisco Art Week exhibitions, offering quieter, more focused encounters with artists working across generations and disciplines. Whether fitting in a morning visit before the fair or winding down with an afternoon of looking, these are the gallery shows to see during San Francisco Art Week.

Heather Day: Blue Distance at Berggruen Gallery

One of the standout San Francisco Art Week exhibitions, Blue Distance, marks Heather Day’s return to Berggruen Gallery for her second solo exhibition. Known for abstract paintings that explore memory, sensation, and landscape, Day draws from her time in the Mojave Desert, translating textures, sounds, and even scent into expansive fields of color and form. Her practice centers on a distinctive cut-and-stitch method, in which biomorphic shapes are painted, sliced, and reassembled—archiving gesture and movement within the surface itself. The result is a meditative approach to painting that mirrors the fluid, shifting nature of everyday experience.

The exhibition’s title references an essay by Rebecca Solnit, which considers how distance renders light blue. This idea, alongside the art-historical legacy of Helen Frankenthaler and Sam Gilliam, informs Day’s soak-stain techniques and subtle draping effects. Working intuitively, she paints fragments on the floor before cutting, sewing, and assembling compositions guided by fleeting memory and sensation.

What we love: Day’s paintings quietly transmit solitude and seclusion, capturing the feeling of distance within a single, resonant surface.

On view until March 5, 2026