Events & Exhibitions
CCA’s dynamic public programming brings art, architecture, design, writing, and the world of ideas to life through events, lectures, exhibitions, and more.
Join us
All of CCA’s lectures, symposiums, and workshops are free, offering opportunities for students and the public to engage with cultural topics and creative practices through the work and ideas of award-winning artists, designers, authors, scholars, and alumni.
Featured events and programs
Art in action
Explore how democracy, creative activism, and voter advocacy intersect through Creative Citizens in Action’s (CCA@CCA) annual series of public programs, which span the disciplines of art, design, architecture, and writing.
Creative Citizens Series
Enjoy curated new work by our community of students, faculty, staff, and visiting artists in our contemporary galleries. Exhibitions are open to all and always free.
Current exhibitions
Recognitions / 认 • 知, a solo exhibition by Christine Wong Yap, at the new CCA Campus Gallery in Blattner Hall.
Discover on-campus experiences
Enjoy the future of art and design all year-long in CCA’s mix of campus galleries and presentation spaces. Visitors will find new work by students, faculty, staff, and visiting artists in curated venues that embrace diverse perspectives and a range of contemporary approaches. Offering our students the unique opportunity to present their work and expand their practice in a professional setting, the campus galleries are also a place for our community of makers and the public to connect across contemporary art and design. Plan a visit, today.
Meet the voices of tomorrow
CCA’s graduating student showcases, presented by class year, are digital time capsules of capstone projects and culminating work.
Celebrating the makers of 2024
Featuring work by graduating students, the 2024 Showcase represents the diversity of practice across CCA’s Architecture, Design, Fine Arts, and Humanities & Sciences divisions. Navigate the full showcase experience on Portal, and check out the Deans' Spotlight collection of outstanding projects from each academic division.
Creative Citizens in Action
The Creative Citizens in Action (CCA@CCA) initiative provides important resources to the CCA community to power dialogue and making related to creative activism. The connected programming explores art, democratic engagement, and current affairs through public events, exhibitions, grant opportunities, voting resources, and connections to the classroom.
CCA@CCA is overseen by the Exhibitions and Public Programming department in partnership with Student Affairs, as well as libraries, academic divisions, communications, and faculty.
Explore our stories
Rewind Review Respond
Rewind Review Respond (RRR) is an online forum where CCA students write about recent events and the ideas that affect their practice, communities, and fields of study. Through writing, videos, and interviews, RRR is an opportunity to debrief on a lecture, panel, screening, or roundtable and to dive deeper into ideas discussed.
RRR is organized by the Exhibitions and Public Programming department and led by a team of student editors, writers, and designers.
Exhibitions at CCA
@ccaexhibitions
May 15, 2024
"Gissen expresses the importance of going beyond accessibility studies; we need to make architectural decisions from the perspective of impaired people. We don’t need to make better buildings, rather, we need to reinvent ourselves in the aim of making better architects."
Visit RRR Volume 8 via our linktree to read Evelynn Harra's review of a talk by former CCA faculty member David Gissen. Gissen’s presentation at CCA, "The Architecture of Disability," took place on February 22, 2024, and was based off of his most recent book, "The Architecture of Disability: Buildings, Cities and Landscapes Beyond Access" (University of Minnesota Press, 2023).
Evelynn Harra (MA Visual & Critical Studies 2024) has an interest in the visual culture of perception. Her research values the multiplicity of personal experience to deeper understand the visual art within our culture.
May 14, 2024
The Potrero Hill Artists' Exhibition is purportedly the longest-running annual art show in San Francisco. It was organized by the late Charles Farr and a group of other neighborhood artists in 1955 to prevent the Potrero Branch from imminent closure. Continuing their legacy and vision, SFPL Staff are elated to host the exhibition for the 63rd time in honor of their Open House.
The reception on Saturday, May 25, from 6 to 9pm, will include live music, light refreshments, craft projects for young children, and the opportunity to meet local artists while taking in the beautiful view.
The exhibition will be on view May 25th – July 25th at the SFPL Potrero Branch, located at 1616 20th Street.
May 13, 2024
CCA FACULTY are invited to apply to receive $500–$1000 in grant support from CCA@CCA for fall 2024 course efforts tied to civic and democratic engagement. Application deadline: August 12, 2024
The goal of this grant program is to support the implementation of small-scale, immediate, public-facing events, projects, or activations that aim to improve the learning experience and provide opportunities for students to practice creative activism. Projects require a public outcome that can be featured in the Creative Citizens Program Series as well as social media and online platforms.
In fall 2024, we are looking for projects related to voting and democratic engagement, timed in connection to the United States Presidential Election on November 5th. Activities are encouraged to take place before the election, but projects taking place later in the semester will still be considered as long as they are connected to democratic engagement.
In addition to events, grant funds have supported a number of book, zine, website, social media, and printing projects. Grant funds are not available for private class visits or programs that do not have a public outcome.
All faculty who are actively teaching at CCA in fall 2024 are invited to request funds. Faculty who have previously received CCA@CCA grants are eligible to apply again, but priority will be given to new applicants. Faculty are welcome to collaborate on a grant application and share the awarded funds between their classes.
More information and a link to the application are available via our linktree.
May 10, 2024
"We are a group of women artists exploring and making work about women's bodies in connection to pain, pleasure, trauma, subversion and cultural expectations."
Embodied Narratives: Women's Art in Dialogue showcased painting, drawings, sculpture and video performance pieces by Gabby Anderman, Amanda Bristow, Chloe Cortez, Molly Rapp, and Ashley Spencer (MFA Fine Arts).
Embodied Narratives was on view in PLAySPACE Gallery in February 2024. PLAySPACE, the Paulette Long and Shepard Pollack Art Community Experiment, was founded in 2005 to provide resources for student artists and curators to conceptualize and present exhibitions and events oriented toward the academic community.
Installation images from each Spring 2024 PLAySPACE exhibition are accessible in our photo archives (link in bio).
Find what’s next in our calendar of exhibitions and events