During the California Academy of Sciences' anniversary event on Friday, staff members represented by the union, CalAcademy Workers United, were spreading the word about their ongoing struggle negotiating a fair contract with management.

SFist visited the California Academy of Sciences on Friday where attendees were invited to celebrate the museum’s 172nd anniversary with discounted admission and family-friendly activities. Greeting visitors in front of the museum’s entrance were two colorful murals and staff members from the union, CalAcademy Workers United, spreading awareness about its ongoing efforts to negotiate with museum management for higher wages as well as better job security and clearer pathways to promotion, according to the Chronicle.

CalAcademy Workers United formed in July 2023 and has been in negotiations with museum leadership for nearly a year. While some progress has been made — with 27 tentative agreements reached — core issues like fair wages, job security, and staffing remain unresolved. Management points to an $8.7 million budget shortfall as a limiting factor, but union members note that more than half of staff earn below San Francisco’s living wage, even as top executives, including Executive Director Scott Sampson, received significant raises — according to Mission Local, Samson took home $632,626 in 2023.

In recent months, layoffs and restructuring have disproportionately affected the museum’s educational and public-facing departments, with thirty-eight employees accepting severance and four more facing potential layoffs. Remaining staff say their roles have shifted dramatically with little communication, leaving teams stretched thin and morale low.

Tensions escalated further after the museum abruptly shut down its Youth Action for the Planet program — a teen-led climate initiative — just weeks after several youth participants handed out flyers in support of the union. The program’s coordinator, Aleks Liou, was soon placed on leave and later allowed to resign following union-led negotiations. Liou had secured a $250,000 federal grant to continue the program beyond its pilot year, but the museum opted to return the funds, later citing plans to redesign the program to serve Indigenous youth.

The incident sparked backlash from local leaders. In December, the San Francisco Youth Commission unanimously passed a motion urging the mayor and Board of Supervisors to address the museum’s actions, calling the shutdown a “disheartening example of pushback against young people for exercising their voices and participating in social justice movements.”

In response, several former participants have launched a new youth-led organization, Youth Riot Network, to continue their work in climate justice and youth empowerment.

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Hopefully the attention that was garnered on Friday for the union's cause will help put pressure on museum management to finally meet its demands.

Images: Leanne Maxwell/SFist

Previously: Claude the Albino Alligator Gets His Own Webcam as Academy of Sciences Rings In 172 Years

COVID-19 has wreaked havoc on the Bay Area's dining and arts scenes, claiming hundreds of restaurants and putting even more financial pressure on local culture hubs. Citing a massive loss of revenue, the Oakland Museum of California (OMCA) was recently forced to remove 20 full-time positions.

Amid the pandemic, OMCA announced in a recent press release that the institution has lost some $2.5 million in earned revenue since it has remained closed to the public for now well over a year. Even worse: OMCA now estimates that it will see an additional $2.3 million in evaporated income this upcoming fiscal year. And being that staffing-related costs make up more than 70% of the museum’s overall expenses, it was only a matter of time before serious job cuts were made to at least mitigate the nearly $5 million that OMCA expects to lose since the pandemic began.

“I have so much gratitude for everyone’s full participation in this process, and feel fortunate that we’ve been able to keep our staff employed up to this point during such a difficult year,” said OMCA Director and CEO, Lori Fogarty in a press release.

(Previously, a PPP loan was given to OMCA in April of 2020... funds that were almost exclusively used to pay full-time staff employees through the end of this past summer. Afterward, staff was left to reduce their working hours, allowing the museum to avoid layoffs for all part-time and full-time staff through December 31, 2020. Alas, that was now over three months ago.)

Fogarty also has shifted how the art center will hire new staff when the time comes, as well. OMCA will expand its commitment to becoming an "anti-racist and equitable multicultural organization" in the coming months — adding that the current staff reductions didn't adversely impact the frontline staff and lowest-paid workers.

“Beyond the unfortunate reality of a reduction of staff positions, this new structure will shift the ways we work together, and we are implementing staff recommendations related to advancing our commitment to becoming an anti-racist, equitable, multicultural organization," she adds. "This organizational redesign is intended to make the museum more relevant to our community, and is consistent with our vision for our social impact — building trust, connection, and understanding between people and groups.”

And to ensure OMCA's most financially vulnerable employees have an additional earnings cushion, a "new compensation philosophy" will see an increase of base-level pay for low-earning workers increase to four times the federal poverty level; this amounts to an increase of $9 per hour for those workers.

Respite, thankfully, is now on the horizon after OMCA announced it intends to reopen in June of 2021 — which will be well over a year since it closed to the public on March 13, 2020.

To give a tax-deductible to OMCA — and also have your donation matched as part of the organization’s “Double Your Impact” grant challenge, which will see every donation made before June 30 matched, dollar for dollar, by an anonymous donor up to $75,000 — click here.

Related: The Castro's Renowned GLBT Historical Society Museum Now Open to the Public

SFMOMA Set To Reopen Next Week With New Large-Scale Wall Projects, Pandemic-Inspired Artwork

Image: "Woman with Elbow on Raised Knee," by Viola Frey on display at OMCA (Photo: Courtesy of Twitter via @oaklandmuseumca)

It's been just over two years since the SFMOMA closed for a massive construction/remodeling/rebuilding project, and unless you count those pop-up events they've been doing here and there, SF has basically been without a modern art museum since June, 2013. But is an end to the (sometimes troubled) project in sight? If this time-lapse of the last two years of construction is any indication, the expansion just might be on-track after all.

A video posted by SNØHETTA (@snohetta) on Jun 10, 2015 at 10:34am PDT

"2 years of construction in the blink of an eye - time flies when you're having fun and we can't wait for Spring 2016!" writes Snøhetta, the architects behind the MOMA project. But the process has not always been an easy one! After all, who can forget that traffic-snarling Richard Serra sculpture, the MOMA construction worker who was fired because he felt sorry for a raccoon, or the worker who was critically injured in a fall down the site's elevator shaft. And we still have one more year to go!

Yes, one more year. MOMA's much-anticipated reopening is slated for the spring of 2016. Until then, entertain yourself with the expansion renderings below, and get your MOMA fill with their "On The Go" events, which will run until the museum reopens its doors.

See all of SFist's SFMOMA coverage here

Out-of-towners and guide books like to euphemistically describe San Francisco as "colorful". By that they might mean perverse, strange, demented or just a little more intense than your typical stopover in Des Moines. But the thing is that a city is a city, and living in one means a fair amount of grey on grey action. And even though we may live in the most colorful city in the world, all that grey can really start to get to you.

That's why when it comes to art exhibitions, my natural preference is always towards large oily canvases that blast my brain open with saturated color and leave my jaw hanging slack (no offensive, thoughtful black and white photography shows). The de Young's new retrospective of Richard Diebenkorn's work does just that, with the added bonus of highlighting a true hometown art hero. Diebs made his home here from an early age, attending venerable schools like Lowell, Stanford and Cal, and setting up shop all over the Bay Area.

The works featured here showcase a prolific period between 1953 and 1966, so-called the "Berkeley Years" for the time Diebenkorn spent in his backyard East Bay studio, where he painted pieces in what would become known as the San Francisco school of abstract expressionism (think natural theme, light and shadow and spartan, airy spaces).

Diebenkorn's paintings range from the representational to the abstract but are bound by a cohesion of strokes and color sensibility: his abstracted aerial landscapes and figures breathe in sage, periwinkle, oranges and salty ocean tones, with pops of canary yellow and pockets of muddy darkness.

While the show is extensive, the nature of the work means you won't leave feeling drained and depleted, but refreshed, revitalized and a little bit less grey.

Richard Diebenkorn, The Berkeley Years
June 22 - September 29
de Young Museum, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Dr.
(415) 750-3600

The de Young is paying tribute to local floral designers with their annual springtime mash-up of art and flowers. From March 19 to 23, the show features the work of more than 100 of the Bay Area’s most innovative floral designers, who have created arrangements that draw inspiration from and pay homage to the museum's permanent collections.

Watch the de Young's Bouquets to Art centerpiece rise up like a tower of flower power (we can't resist! It rhymes!) in this time-lapse video:

Bouquets to Art, March 19-23
de Young Museum, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, 415.750.3600

Just heads up that, despite their vehement claims that they're truly not closing for three years, SFMOMA is really kinda closing the museum as we know it on June 2 in order to embark on a major expansion, designed by celebrated Norwegian architects of the moment, Snohetta. They stress that in the coming few years the museum will simply be going "beyond its walls and directly into the community," and doing a bunch of wall-free, site-specific installations, as well as neighborhood festivals and an array of collaborative and traveling museum exhibitions. Anyway, the new museum is sure gonna pretty you guys, in 2016.

They just released a couple more renderings from Snohetta, including ones of the new Howard Street entrance, the third floor sculpture terrace that will run the length of the building from Howard to Minna, featuring a vertical garden that will be "the biggest public living wall of native plants in San Francisco." Enjoy.

[via SFMOMA]

The SF Bay Guardian will join creative forces with SFMOMA for a rooftop party tonight marking the end of the Cindy Sherman show: "A toast to Cindy Sherman." Details? We have them. Boy, do we have them:

Toast the final days of Cindy Sherman at SFMOMA (closing Oct 8) with a fabulous evening on SFMOMA's Rooftop presented by the San Francisco Bay Guardian!

Come check out pop-up drag performances by Lil' Miss Hot Mess, Boychild, and Ladybear -- artists who re-created works by Cindy Sherman for the SF Bay Guardian's fantastic piece, "Tastes of Cindy."

Guests are encouraged to bring cameras and be inspired to create their own photographs. There will be a cash bar + complimentary wine from Bluxome Winery.

This is the perfect opportunity to catch Cindy Sherman's blockbuster retrospective at SFMOMA before it closes. Don't forget to invite your friends!

This event is FREE with half-priced Thursday evening admission! All ages are encouraged to attend

The festivities start at 6 pm and lasts until 8 pm-ish. Check out the Facebook page and/or SFBG for more info.

SFMOMA: 151 Third (at Howard), S.F., 415-357-4000

East meets West in a fascinating exhibit at the Exploratorium for just a few more days. "The World of Your Senses" delves into the surprising parallels in how traditional Buddhism and modern Western science understand our sensory perceptions. The exhibition was created by Tibetan Buddhist monks and nuns who have been studying western science while living in exile in India. Several of them are on hand to discuss the show with visitors, including one who is demonstrating the traditional Tibetan painting style used for the exhibition panels. More pictures here. Really, make time in your busy schedule for this remarkable chance to chat with the monastics and learn more about how our own bodies work.

The World of Your Senses
Parallel Perspectives from Buddhism and Western Science of Sensory Perception
A special exhibition featuring Tibetan Buddhist Monastics from India
Through this Thursday, May 10, 2012
The Exploratorium
Palace of Fine Arts, 3601 Lyon Street, San Francisco

Who better to promote Jean Paul Gaultier's upcoming exhibit at the deYoung Mueseum than Kylie Minogue? No one, that's who. The pop icon's image, as seen above, will grace poster walls, lampposts, and a sundry of buildings in the Bay Area during the exhibition starting this week. (Her laced visage and body was also seen at pitstops in Montreal.)

On March 24, the de Young Museum will smash the retrospective's hymen, called, The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk, the first exhibition devoted to the French designer famous for the cone bra, outfitting Madonna's Blond Ambition tour, costuming numerous Luc Besson and Pedro Almodovar movies, and so much more. His personal themes of “equality, diversity and perversity" will highlight the exhibit on view at the de Young from March 24 to August 19, 2012.\

The grand opening party happens on March 23 at 8 pm. Tickets are $250-$300. If you can't swing tickets to the gala, head over to the museum this month through August to check out the show.

What: The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk
Where: deYoung Museum, Golden Gate Park (50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive), SF, 415-750-3600

Who better than @kylieminogue to embody the JPG exhibit coming to San Francisco @deYoungMuseum ? twitter.com/JPGaultier/sta…

— Jean Paul Gaultier (@JPGaultier) March 20, 2012

PREVIOUSLY: Jean Paul Gaultier: New Creative Director Of Diet Coke

The Haight-Ashbury Museum of Psychedelic Art and History, a proposed museum that would focus on psychedelic art and Haight-Ashbury during the psychedelia movement of '60s. Supporters are trying to raise funds via IndieGoGo. Here's what it's all about:

The Haight-Ashbury movement left an undeniable impact upon the world and the reverberations of the psychedelic sixties are still being felt today. Strangely there is no museum dedicated to keeping the history alive and relevant for the millions of visitors who come to San Francisco searching for inspiration and authenticity. A non-profit community supported museum will permanently cement San Francisco as the home of psychedelia. Our intention is for the museum to become an attraction in and of itself that will educate and inspire visitors for generations to come to reinvent the world according to how they want to live.

Help co-create the world's first museum dedicated to psychedelic art and history as well as the first museum to be established through crowdfunding. You can make this museum a reality by generously donating funds and memorabilia to the Haight-Ashbury Museum of Psychedelic Art and History. Working together we can make this happen. Thanks for your support!

This would be the first museum in the world to present the history of psychedelic, ranging from ancient indigenous practices to contemporary works. The museum will be built solely on contributions without government assistance. The goal is to raise $30,000, but more is better. If we can't convince you, how about Peter Coyote? Check it:

Donate here.

[Laughing Squid]

"At the de Young" by andertho.

At 10am this morning officials from the Exploratorium held a groundbreaking ceremony for the $300 million project which will transform Piers 15 and 17 on the northern waterfront into a state-of-the-art, 9-acre science playground for the City's favorite hands-on, educational museum.

Technically speaking, the "groundbreaking" began underwater between the two piers where a fleet of tugboats has been dredging the bottom to make way for structural reinforcements to the nearly 100-year old piers. Scheduled to be completed in 2013, the section on Pier 15 will capitalize on it's new location by providing docking space for oceanographic research vessels (We're already getting excited for a visit from the F.L.I.P. Ship). Naturally, the new Exploratorium's environmental impact will mostly be visual, as the museum will meet it's own electricity needs with a solar collector on the roof and heat or cool itself using water from the Bay. Although the project received $90 million in anonymous donations back in March, the project is still seeking $91 million to put towards their current goal of $300 million.

[NBC Bay Area]
[Chron]

Recently approved to start building a $175 million waterfront museum on Piers 15 and 17, the Exploratorium (the city's finest hands-on museum) just received a whopping $90 million donation care of two anonymous donors. "The Exploratorium has outgrown its current home at the Palace of Fine Arts," reports SF Business Times. "The planned new museum would be three times larger." Now all they need is an additional $40 million, and they're in business.

This is another NSFV (Not Safe for Vegans) post, so consider yourselves warned. SF Weekly food blogger Meredith Brody snapped the pic at right of a whole steer that spit roasted and then butchered before an audience at a event Saturday night celebrating a week of events at the museum focusing on Futurism. We, ourselves, are simultaneously grossed out and drooling over the photo and this write-up by Brody, which describes how the meat slices were sent onto a conveyor belt around the room, slathered in mole, and served atop Tartine bread along with a bunch of yummy cocktails.

Were it not for Treasure Island and, simultaneously, LitQuake on Saturday night, we would have given our eye teeth to have tasted the deliciousness.