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 2023
Featuring work by graduating students, the 2023 Showcase represents the diversity of practice across CCA’s Architecture, Design, Fine Arts, and Humanities & Sciences divisions.
The deans of CCA’s four academic divisions selected students whose submissions to the 2023 Showcase deserve special recognition. Every student work chosen for a Deans’ Spotlight (displayed below) demonstrates excellence in theory and practice.
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
Sept. 18, 2023
Please join us in Timken Hall on Wednesday, September 27, from 7:30 to 9pm for a talk by photographer Binh Danh.
Binh Danh reconfigures traditional photographic techniques and processes in unconventional ways to delve into the connection between history, identity, and place. Danh is noted for his contemporary daguerreotypes of national parks. Their reflective surfaces enable people of all backgrounds to see themselves as a part of the beauty of the American landscape. His work has been collected by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the National Gallery of Art, Washington; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the San Jose Museum of Art, among others. He is an associate professor of art at San José State University.
This event is co-presented by the Deborah and Kenneth Novack Creative Citizens Series and the Larry Sultan Visiting Artist Lecture Series. The Deborah and Kenneth Novack Creative Citizens Series is funded by an endowment gift to support an annual series of public programs focused on creative activism. The Larry Sultan Visiting Artist Lecture Series is supported by the Fine Arts Division, Nion McEvoy, Pier 24 Photography, and the Larry Sultan Estate.
For information on the Fall 2023 Creative Citizens Series, please visit the link in our bio.
@ccaphotoprogram @binhtdanh @ccafinearts #CreativeCitizensInAction
Sept. 14, 2023
Join us next Thursday, 9/21, at 11am for a Tea Time Talk on Belonging with Steve Jones, Adjunct 2 Professor, @ccafyp. This conversation will take place at the CCA Campus Gallery at 1480 17th Street, SF.
"The culture of food (making, sharing, hosting, serving) for me is always a space of connection, roots, belonging, memory, and comfort—where friends, family, community, and the individual congregate, let their guard down, and break bread. The feeling we get seeing a familiar representation of ourselves discussed in a class presentation or history lecture - is similar to the feeling of discovering the familiar food of our culture locally, when far from home." -Steve Jones
The Tea Time Talks on Belonging series invites members of the CCA community to talk about creative practices that amplify Belonging through pedagogy and art. Our panelists invite you to engage in thinking about Belonging through various mediums, including conversation, making, movement, and just being.
Hosted by Shalini Agrawal and moderated by Layla Namak (MArch), Tea Time Talks on Belonging will take place on Thursdays or Wednesdays between 11am and 11:50am. This series is funded by an endowment gift to support The Deborah and Kenneth Novack Creative Citizens Series at CCA, an annual series of public programs focused on creative activism.
Image 1: a dish photograph from @jereneseats
Image 2: Screen 1, by Lorna Simpson, 1986
Sept. 13, 2023
Join us THIS FRIDAY September 15 from 6-8pm to celebrate the opening of the first part of “Between Friends” in the PLAySPACE gallery! This exhibition will be on view through September 28.
We will be having an artist talk with Willow (@26willow26) at 7pm in the gallery. Other artists in the exhibition include: Xianghan Cheng (@chengcxh), Gene VanWyk (@green_bean_gene), Dottie Lo Bue (@dottielll), Luning Ge, and Deena Qabazard (@deenamachina).
See you there!! @ccaplayspace
Sept. 12, 2023
The CCA 2023 Faculty Exhibition, "stories of us," is on view at the CCA Campus Gallery (1480 17th Street) through October 6. Gallery hours are Wednesday 11am–7pm, Thursday & Friday 11am–4pm.
Participating artists include Shalini Agrawal, Verda Alexander, Kim Anno, Curtis Hidemasa Arima, Sholeh Asgary, Bob Aufuldish, Tim Belonax, Rachel Berger, Rebekah Bloyd, Julian Carter, Nelson Chan, Gregory Climer, Marilyn da Silva, Sara Dean, John De Fazio, Melinda Luisa de Jesús, Mark Donohue, Mia Feuer, Max Gavrich, Caroline Goodwin, Lynda Grose, Mara Holt Skov, chris hamamoto, Taraneh Hemami, Rob Hugel, Thomas Ingalls, Chris Johnson, Steve Jones, Janette Kim, Yina Kim, Heesoo Kwon, Katherine Lam, Christina La Sala, Ana Llorente, Ian MacColl, Adam McCauley, Dan McHale, Nasim Moghadam, Ranu Mukherjee, Lydia Nakashima Degarrod, Erik Parra, Erik Scollon, Pallavi Sharma, Matt Silady, Peter Simensky, Deborah Stein, Jon Stich, Sunny A. Smith, Jon Sueda, Chris Treggiari, Michael Washington, Michael Wertz, Anne Wolf, and Corey Wolffs.
Image: "stories of us" installation view, with artwork by Jon Sueda and chris hamamoto, Erik Parra, Corey Wolffs, Marilyn Da Silva, Tim Belonax, and Sunny A. Smith.
Find what’s next in our calendar of exhibitions and events