San Francisco was the center of bohemian culture in California in the late 1930s and 1940s. It was a golden era for art making and the blossoming of Bay Area art due to a confluence of factors, one being the activities of the San Francisco Art Association (SFAA), a group of art enthusiasts and artists who nurtured the growth of a museum and art school (the California School of Fine Arts) and organized yearly annual exhibitions that stimulated and propelled progressive art of the time.  

The exhibition, San Francisco the Golden Years 1930-1960: Making a Scene, is drawn exclusively from the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art collection. NEHMA’s collection, with its focus on the art of the western United States, is ideally suited to provide in-depth examples of art from this little-known period in art history. This is the first major exhibition and publication to look at the pivotal and colorful history of the SFAA.  

Co-curated by art historian Michael Duncan and NEHMA curator Bolton Colburn