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Something's Happenin' Here
Bay Area Rock 'n' Roll 1963-73
September 25, 2009-August 28, 2010

Seminal Bay Area bands such asThe Beau Brummels, The Charlatans, Country Joe and the Fish, Quicksilver Messenger Service and David Laflamme & It’s a Beautiful Day received their due alongside better-known Bay Area names like The Jefferson Airplane, Santana, Grateful Dead and Sly and the Family Stone in this survery of the Bay Area rock scene from the folk-infused early ‘60s to the last days of the Fillmore West. Click here more on this exhibition

Star Quality: The World of Noël Coward
April 17, 2009 - August 29, 2009

Star Quality showed the full extent of Coward's prodigious talents as a playwright, lyricist, director of plays and movies, actor, cabaret artist, wartime patriot, painter, and patron of charitable causes -- as well as his knack for celebrity and his gift for sustaining warm and enduring friendships -- by bringing together dozens of rare photographs, drawings, paintings, original manuscripts, letters to and from a range of luminaries, sheet music, posters, playbills, set and costume designs, personal memorabilia, audio and video clips, and original costumes, including several of the silk dressing gowns that became Coward’s trademark.

Hello, Carol! A Celebration of Carol Channing
September 26, 2008 - March 14, 2009

With unparalleled access to Ms. Channing's personal collection, the exhibition included stunning costumes ranging from the original 1964 Hello, Dolly! dress -- which has become an icon of American musical theatre -- to one-of-a-kind outfits created by Hollywood legend Bob Mackie. Also on exhibit were rare photographs, video and audio clips from throughout Ms. Channing's career, posters, programs, scripts, original drawings by Al Hirschfeld and distinctive memorabilia such as her Tony and Golden Globe Awards.

Art & Artifice
75 Years of Design at San Francisco Ballet
March 18, 2008 - August 30, 2008

A landmark celebration of San Francisco Ballet’s 75 years of excellence, Art & Artifice / 75 Years of Design at San Francisco Ballet examines the role of design in SFB’s continual, imaginative reinventions of itself, which have enabled it to endure as the oldest professional ballet company in the United States. The history of design at the San Francisco company, founded in 1933 by former Ballets Russes dancer and choreographer Adolph Bolm, tells the story of ballet design in America in microcosm.The exhibition surveys early influences from the Ballets Russes, Russian artist Leon Bakst, modern American artist Paul Cadmus, stage and film designer Irene Sharaff, European artist and designer Nicholas Georgiadis, and many more. Curated by Brad Rosenstein, Professor William Eddleman and Melissa Leventon.

Enrico Banducci's hungry i:
San Francisco's Legendary Nightclub
March 28, 2007 - September 30, 2007

In the 1950s and 1960s, the hungry i in North Beach was considered the hippest spot in the country, and showcased such pioneering talents as Woody Allen, Orson Bean, Shelley Berman, Lenny Bruce, Bill Cosby, Professor Irwin Corey, Phyllis Diller, Dick Gregory, Tom Lehrer, Bob Newhart, Nichols & May, Mort Sahl, Ronnie Schell, and Jonathan Winters. It was the home of such musical acts as The Kingston Trio, The Limeliters, Stan Wilson, The Gateway Singers, Peter Paul and Mary, and cabaret artists ranging from Mabel Mercer and Kaye Ballard to the then virtually unknown Barbra Streisand.

In Character: Actors Acting
September 22, 2006 - February 24, 2007

While the camera has always been kind to actors of great beauty, it is equally kind to performers who use their faces to express powerful emotions, with or without words. Stage audiences who continue to rave about a performance years later are often hard-pressed to describe a face or gesture that left such an indelible impression. The exhibition, based on the book IN CHARACTER: Actors Acting by photographer/author Howard Schatz (Bulfinch Press/Hardcover/April 2006), captures actors who are doing what they do best: acting, instead of merely having their picture taken. In the tradition of the great celebrity portraitists, Irving Penn, Richard Avedon and Annie Leibovitz, Schatz takes portraiture of actors into another realm altogether, by directing them in the development of specific characters.

Harlem of the West:
The San Francisco Fillmore Jazz Era
February 7, 2006 - August 26, 2006

Billie Holiday singing at the New Orleans Swing Club. Dexter Gordon hanging out at Bop City. Dizzy Gillespie, Lionel Hampton, Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington, Chet Baker, and John Coltrane all dropping in for jam sessions. This was San Francisco’s Fillmore District in its musical heyday. In the 1940s and 1950s, the Fillmore was a swinging, eclectic, and integrated neighborhood, boasting two dozen active nightclubs and music joints within its one square mile. Although it has been commemorated in songs, poems, and in Maya Angelous’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, few people today know of the rich musical history of the Fillmore. This is because it virtually vanished – abruptly and thoroughly – due to redevelopment in the 1960s. Presented in conjunction with the publication of a new book of the same title from Chronicle Books, the exhibition is curated by the book’s authors Elizabeth Pepin and Lewis Watts, who have spent years researching and compiling this neglected history. The exhibition features sumptuous new prints of rare archival photographs, oral accounts from the neighborhood residents and musicians who experienced the Fillmore at its height, original memorabilia from the clubs, video, and of course the music.

Irving Berlin's Show Business: Broadway
July 27 - December 19, 2005

Show Business: Irving Berlin's Broadway examines Berlin's 50-plus-year career on the Broadway stage in the context of the development of the musical and contains a diverse group of objects evoking the rich visual legacy of his career. Included in the exhibition are photographs, set and costume designs, drawings and caricatures, models, scrapbooks, posters, programs, printed ephemera and album covers. A majority of the objects come from The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts (NYPLPA). Additional loan objects come from a number of public and private collections, including manuscripts from the Library of Congress and never-before-seen materials from the Berlin Family Collection. Sound stations enable visitors to hear Berlin’s work for the stage in performance as originally intended.

Painted Men: Chinese Opera Backstage
March 9 - June 4, 2005

Curated by Dr. William C. Hu and Sally Yu Leung, the exhibition pays tribute to the enormous impact the art form has made on San Francisco and vice versa. Performed continuously in the city from 1852 to the present, Chinese Opera is the longest surviving civic theatre in California. Some of the first theatres built in San Francisco were devoted to Chinese Opera (the first time this outdoor theatre genre was performed indoors), attracting enormous audiences of both westerners and Chinese immigrants, for whom the performances were a a combination of newspaper, soap opera, social club, and cultural home in the new world. It was San Francisco that also first introduced female actors to a form which for centuries had been performed exclusively by men. The exhibition addresses this convention along with many other backstage and onstage practices, and explores how these theatrical traditions reflect Chinese culture as a whole. A great deal of the history of Chinese Opera in China was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, so the artifacts preserved in San Francisco offer a much more comprehensive picture of the past 150 years of this art form.

Madame Butterfly: From Puccini to Miss Saigon
September 24, 2004 - January 22, 2005

Marking the centenary of Puccini’s classic opera Madama Butterfly (which premiered at La Scala on February 17, 1904), this exhibition charts the history of the story from its beginnings in Pierre Loti’s novel/travelogue Madame Chrysanthème, John Luther Long’s novella Madame Butterfly, and David Belasco’s play Madam Butterfly, all leading to Puccini’s masterful opera (which survived its disastrous premiere to become one of the world’s most popular operas). The second half of the exhibition focuses on many of the performing arts incarnations of the story since, often in highly critical or revisionist versions, including notable revivals and film versions of the opera itself. This part of the exhibition also surveys ballet versions of the story by Sir Frederick Ashton and Stanton Welch; films ranging from Mary Pickford’s silent version to Sayonara; David Henry Hwang’s landmark play M. Butterfly; and the musical Miss Saigon, which reimagined Puccini’s opera for a new generation.

With a Song in His Heart: A
Celebration of Richard Rodgers
April 16 - September 10, 2002

In tribute to Broadway composer Richard Rodgers this retrospective exhibition marks the centennial of his birth and traces Rodgers’ life and career through photos, programs, sheet music, posters, set designs, scores, audio and video material, and other memorabilia.

Kronos @ 30 / Thirty Years of Kronos Quartet
January 22 - June 21, 2003

Over the course of its first three decades, Kronos Quartet has established itself as a major force in the evolution of contemporary classical music. Playing the works of everyone from Mozart to Mingus, Stravinsky to Hendrix, and commissioning new pieces that have virtually created a modern repertoire for its genre, Kronos has redefined the sound, look and purpose of the string quartet. Describing the group to its readers, Rolling Stone magazine proclaimed that Kronos Quartet had become "classical music's own Fab Four."

Hirschfeld: A Centennial Celebration.
Treasures from the Hirschfeld Archive
July 29 - December 19, 2003

Al Hirschfeld, the renowned “characterist” for the New York Times, indelibly captured the performing arts, particularly Broadway theatre, with unparalleled wit and artistry for over 75 years. The exhibition is a unique gathering of treasures from Hirschfeld's personal archive. In nearly 40 original drawings, Hirschfeld's work portrays a mini-history of American theatre, capturing stars ranging from Ethel Merman to Al Pacino, and recalling such classics as Oklahoma! and Show Boat