Artnet Listed "Ancient Wisdom" as One of the Top Museum Shows in SF + Opening Highlights

Favorite moments, upcoming public programs and artist-led tours

Ken and I are tired, happy, and basking in the glow from seeing thousands of you opening weekend of Ancient Wisdom for a Future Ecology: Trees, Time & Technology at di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art in SF and at ATRIUM with our Tree of Knowledge sculpture. It was all the culmination of so many conversations, ideas and hard work to make it happen. It was thrilling to have Artnet list it as one of the 7 Must-See Museum Shows in San Francisco!

We loved having so many wonderful friends, family, curators, our collectors, artist comrades, and new people come! Between FOG, ATRIUM and the opening for SF Art Week, I had such a big love burst for SF. It was incredible having so many of you also at the artist-led tour the Saturday after the opening. We just added another one. See dates below. That’s our favorite way to share the thinking and creative process on the work. Here’s a list of upcoming artist-led tours and events at di Rosa SF.

Trees, Time, and Tu BiShvat: Artist-led Tour for the Jewish New Year for the Trees: Feb 1, 1-3 p.m. (This Sunday:) RSVP
Partners include Reboot, JCCSF, SF Jewish Film Festival, Value Culture, Contemporary Jewish Museum, and Marin JCC. Free & open to the public.

Just added: Artist-led Tour of Exhibition: Sat Feb 7, 4-5 p.m. RSVP

An Afternoon of Feminist Art + Action with my Dendrofemonology: A Feminist History Tree Ring and many gender/reproductive rights orgs on the eve of International Women’s Day: Sat March 7, 2-5 p.m. RSVP

Art, Artifice, & AI: Ken in Conversation with Whitney Museum Curator
Christiane Paul: Thurs March 12, 6:30-8:30 p.m. Christiane Paul has placed Ken’s work in their permanent collection and this will be such a great conversation. Tickets

Ecology Now: Krista Tippett in Conversation with me & Ken: Thursday, March 26, 6:30-8:30 p.m. Krista is one of my favorite minds. So looking forward to this. In partnership with The Long Now Foundation Tickets

Closing Night Celebration & Dance Party: Sat, April 11, 6-9 p.m. RSVP

Thank you di Rosa, and our sponsors: Eve’s Ark, & Women Connect4Good!

OFFSITE EVENTS:
Manny’s in the Mission in SF on Feb 4 at 7:30 p.m., Ken will give a talk on The Future of Physical Intelligence: AI and Robots in the Real World. TIX here.

Ken’s and my first installation together, SMASHING (2008), a participatory video artwork that’s part of the permanent collection of 21c Museum, is going to be part of a new show there The Supernatural 2.0 opening in their Bentonville location on Feb 13.

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Below are highlight images from opening at di Rosa SF, ATRIUM, FOG, SF Art Week —all of it! Mostly from Drew Altizer and some from others.

Those of you Instagram, there is a 1 min reel of highlights here with David Bowie. Volume up. Those of you not on IG, you can watch it on our website.

Swinging on one of my new artworks, the participatory pendulums, Gravitas, with my best friends, my mom, and siblings was a life highlight.

Kyle Malanda, Kelly Sparks, and Camelia Skikos

From left, Caroline & Dr. Jordan Shlain, momala in the middle, one of my BFF’s Tina Sharkey, Lower left: Kimberly Brooks, momala, and then more swinging with Tina.

The brilliant curator of this expanded version of Ancient Wisdom, Twyla Ruby, also curated a companion exhibition in one of the galleries to be in conversation with ours from the di Rosa Collection called Counter Clockwise. Since our show is all about different visualizations of time, she selected artworks that also visualize time by the following artists: Bruce Conner, Richard Berger, Ned Kahn, Paul Kos, Therese Lehaie, Randy Colosky, Michael McFalls, Ulrike Palmbach, Sonya Rapoport and Baochi Zhang.

Kate Eilertsen, Executive Director + Chief Curator, the great steward of di Rosa, introduces the evening, ensuring this foremost collection of Northern California artists is protected, expanded and seen way into the future introduces the night.

Our amazing team who helped put on the show including my producer Lauren Schiller and Ken’s UCBerkeley students and Tamara Edwards!

The fantastic Minnesota Street Project Team (Thank you Michael Rubel, Julie Casemore and Aimee LaDuke!) and art shippers Atthowe who helped get Tree of Knowledge in place in the entrance of ATRIUM and for the run of our exhibition.

Deborah Rappaport, part of a guiding force for MSP and ATRIUM art fair.

Below are some highlights from the vibrant FOG Art & Design SFMOMA Preview Gala:

A flock of friends, curators (Cornelia Stokes the new MOAD/SFMOMA curator), artists and art enthusiasts below, and Rabbi Syd on the right.

Kelly Sparks, Kyle Malanda, Camelia Skikos, and Tamara Edwards who was the participatory pendulum conductor.

Since we are including highlights here for this show, we needed to put some in from when it debuted for the Getty PST Art & Science Collide at the Skirball Cultural Center from fall of 2024 too. Thank you to the original curator Selma Holo who invited us to dream up this show, and the amazing teams from the Skirball Cultural Center and Getty PST ART Art & Science Collide. Also big love to my gallery Nancy Hoffman in New York and Ken’s Catharine Clark Gallery in SF. Ancient Wisdom was a seed planted in 2022 that is now growing in many directions at di Rosa, Minnesota Street Project and beyond.

See you at one of the events for Ancient Wisdom at di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art in SF! You can see all the photos here.

xo

Tiffany

ps. Fashion is art to me. I love thrifting, finding anything unique. And because I was working so hard on this show in my studio, I enlisted Kelly Sparks, one of my best friends for over 30 years, to help me find something to wear for the opening, and miracle of miracles, she found me a wood print top and skirt! J’adore Kelly Sparks. And for this opening, I wore my late grandmother Frances Shlain’s coat with her name embroidered into the side. (Why don’t we do that anymore?) At this opening of Ancient Wisdom, all my ancestors, my grandparents, and my late father, Leonard Shlain were with me. Their ancient wisdom embedded and embroidered into my soul.