Claudia Wieser, "Forum," 2018, Jessica Silverman, San Francisco, CA. Courtesy of the artist and Jessica Silverman, San Francisco.

San Francisco Art Week, officially established in 2024 in the third week of January when the FOG Design+Art at Fort Mason Center for Arts is in town, holds a special place in Anoushka Mirchandani’s heart. In 2025, she had a solo presentation of her work with Jonathan Carver Moore at FOG FOCUS, the fair’s section of galleries showcasing primarily younger, underrepresented artists. All the paintings sold the first night.

Mirchandani describes the fair as intimate with a high quality of work. The location has meaning for her as well since she took art classes at City College of San Francisco former campus at Fort Mason.

Although he started his eponymous gallery less than three years ago, Moore has not been hesitant to do the most possible to promote the artists he shows, who are often underrepresented. Less than a year in, he started a residency next door to the gallery, where Mirchandani created work for her exhibition at FOG. Moore has been to about a dozen fairs, and FOG is one of his favorites.

“I feel like everyone in the Bay does show up for FOG, and they're very interested in supporting artists from the Bay and galleries from the Bay,” he said. “I love the energy of FOG FOCUS too. It's a place where you can experiment more, and people are willing to be a little bit more daring.”

In 2014, the fair was established, and the period it was in town came to be known as FOG Week, drawing collectors and art lovers. In 2024, with branding, a list of participants, maps and a program, Fog Week morphed into SF Art Week, with art consultant Emily Counihan as director.

Counihan got to know FOG when she was in the Bay Area working with the Untitled Art Fair. She liked its association with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and that it’s not put on by a large corporation unlike many other major fairs. She wanted to take the energy it generated and work with arts organizations across the Bay Area.

“I thought that San Francisco Art week would be a great way to have a fair without a fair,” she said. “We could create a platform to do a lot of the outreach and programming and marketing a fair would do, but really the feature would be this collaboration between organizations and special programs and exhibitions that the participants are doing, and then we would layer on to that with additional programming.”

FOG director Sydney Blumenkranz says having Counihan coordinating more than 100 events happening January 17-25 makes a huge difference.

About 80 art spaces throughout the Bay Area will be part of SF Art Week. There are 16 new participants, including Sonoma’s Donum Estate’s sculpture collection and Qualia Contemporary Art in Palo Alto, showing the work of Hung Liu and Guillermo Galindo. The New Museum Los Gatos, as well as Dolby Chadwick Gallery and Southern Exposure in San Francisco, are also joining for the first time.

Hung Liu, "Untitled (Countryside Portrait), 2014" from Quail Contemporary Art, Palo Alto, a new participant in Art Week. © Hung Liu Estate/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Supported by a grant from the Svane Family Foundation’s Culture Forward initiative, there will be a new fair downtown featuring the work of artists with disabilities hosted by San Francisco’s Creativity Explored and New York’s Open Invitational.

Recently, the ICA SF announced the decision to leave their downtown space and go to a nomadic model. This will kick off during Art Week with a Tara Donovan sculpture exhibition in the Transamerica Pyramid and Lily Kwong's 3-D printed living soil installation EARTHSEED DOME in the Transamerica Redwood Park. ICA SF will also host a “public lounge and cultural hub” at the Transamerica Pyramid Center during that week. The lounge and art installations are also supported by grants from Culture Forward.

Another member of SF Art Week’s steering committee, Jessica Silverman, the founder of her eponymous gallery in Chinatown, appreciates all the activity and Counihan taking this on. She likes the welcoming nature of FOG and its relatively small size.

“It’s impossible to miss someone,” she said. “I just got back from Art Basel Paris and so many people told me they couldn’t find me. That can’t happen here.”

The footprint may be small, but attendance is robust. Sculptor Jud Bergeron directs Space Program, which offers residencies for artists. The ones who participated in the program during 2025 will have their work showcased at Minnesota Street Project’s atrium during SF Art Week. Around 1,500 people come through during that time, he says.

He’s glad for the visibility, both for the Space Program artists and the MSP galleries in Dogpatch. “I tell both of my kids, ‘This is where you want to bring your dates. You don't have to talk about yourself. You can talk about the art. There's lots to see. It's in a beautiful part of town and you can walk around,” he said. “I tell other parents that too. I'm like, ‘This is a great Saturday afternoon thing to do with your family. Look at art. You don't have to buy. You don't have to be intimidated by it. Just go look.”

Lawyer, political commentator, and art collector Paul David Anderson, says the week caters to diverse communities, and gives him a chance to let people know about the work of the artists in his collection.

“It doesn't necessarily help an artist when you acquire something pretty significant that they've made, and then it's in your living room, and only your friends see it,” he said. “SF Art Week is an important partner to many in my collection. It allows me to elevate my collection beyond storage in my home.”

Just as SF Art Week is not confined to the city, it extends beyond the week, with events all year long. The satellite programs throughout the year, such as a recent talk on collecting including Anderson and Silverman that Counihan moderated, increase the visibility of the Bay Area art scene.

For Mirchandani, who had one of the paintings she created in Moore’s residency acquired by the Asian Art Museum, SF Art Week continues to be a big part of her life and her career – her first solo institutional exhibition, "My Body Was a River Once," opens at the ICA San Jose on January 16, kicking off the 2026 Art Week.

→ San Francisco Art Week takes place across several Bay Area venues from January 17-25, 2026. Visit sfartweek.com for more information.

→ FOG Design+Art, takes place from January 21-25, at Fort Mason Center for Arts and Culture.
Visit fogfair.com for more information.

Main image: Noushka Mirchandani, "Cherry Springs, 2025." Mirchandani's exhibition "My Body Was A River Once" opens at ICA San Jose, January 16, kicking off 2026 Art Week. Image courtesy the artist.