Designed by 500 Capp Street Artist Guides with educator Amy Berk, the youth education curriculum fosters hands-on experiences and introduces concepts in very accessible terms. Expanding on the artist-driven initiatives of 500 Capp Street, teaching artists are invited to create their own curriculum for workshops built around experimentation, interpretation, and community. The curriculum is creative, accessible, off-beat, and uniquely positioned as an exploration of the work of David Ireland and conceptual art in general. Participatory in nature, educational workshops embrace everyone having the capacity to be an artist, a core philosophy of David Ireland.
David Ireland did not take himself too seriously, and his sense of humor provides a crucial access point for young artists to learn that art can be a portal to what’s possible and imaginable. The curriculum itself is intended as an evolving document built around core concepts and signature lesson plans. For something as abstract as conceptual art, performance, and interpretation, our workshops by design result in a concrete expression, object, experience, and memory.
HIGH SCHOOL SUMMER INTERNSHIP PROGRAM
Beginning in 2022, 500 Capp Street issues open calls to local high school students each year to apply for summer internship opportunities. Four to five week long internships for 2-3 selected interns will be composed of three 4-hour shifts per week, working at the David Ireland House under the guidance of the art and education staff. Summer internships will culminate in an event open to the public where, in the collaborative, artist-driven spirit of 500 Capp Street, interns are invited to select roles for themselves and help develop the event.
500 Capp Street will be closed for the month of May as we prepare the house for an upcoming exhibition, and give our staff much needed time to research, organize, make repairs and work on projects. We value the internal workings needed by our staff to stay nurtured and inspired. We will re-open June 3rd, 2023. Until then!
500 Capp Street, Asian Pacific Cultural Center (APICC), and Center for Asian American Media (CAAM) co-presentsBeing, Belonging & Beyond – SF Bay Area AAPI Dance Film Festival on May 14 at Kapwa Gardens in San Francisco. Curated by APICC and Megan Lowe Dances, screenings will include dance films by Lenora Lee Dance, Alleluia Panis, Sammay Dizon, Yayoi Kambara and culminates in the world premiere screening of HOME(in)STEAD, a site-specific dance work by 500 Capp Street artists-in-residence Megan Lowe and Johnny Huy Nguyen – a performance that utilizes the historical David Ireland House as a visceral canvas for exploring means of feeling, finding, creating, and healing home through dynamic architecture-oriented movement and intimate contact partnering supported by live music, text, and installation.
The finale screening will be followed by a panel discussion and audience Q&A with all participating artists and their collaborators, celebrating the lineage of AAPI performing artists in the Bay Area that are documenting dance and movement in film/video as a way to create conversations about the experiences of AAPI communities and the ways they are reflecting upon and honoring their cultural heritages. The discussion will also explore the collaboration process and how new modes of presentation allows each work to reach more audiences, invoking the immediacy of the original performances, while allowing for new perspectives and narratives through different mediums.
This film festival is also part of CAAMFest and APICC’s 26th United States of Asian America Festival (USAAF).
500 Capp Street in San Francisco is pleased to announce the inaugural open call for two Collection and Archive Fellowships for 2023-2024. The year-long fellowship program will begin in June 2023 and end in June 2024. These fellowships are made possible with generous support from the Henry Luce Foundation.
The Collection and Archive Fellowship will provide emerging scholars and practicing artists the opportunity to grow creatively and professionally while developing new interpretations of the collection and archive at 500 Capp Street. The archive at the David Ireland House at 500 Capp Street is a time capsule of Bay Area conceptual art from David Ireland’s time in San Francisco from the 1970s to 2009.
The fellows will expand the discourse and dialogue around the need for decolonization of museums and collections, critical engagement with archival, research-based and curatorial practices, and an expanded way of seeing collections with a growing dynamic story of Bay Area Conceptual Art Hxstory that is inclusive of Women, LGBTQ+ and BIPOC artists and artist spaces.
Fellows will be guided and supported by Lian Ladia, curator of exhibitions and programs, and Justin Nagle, 500 Capp Street’s archive coordinator in contributing to the following: Organize and access the David Ireland Papers and Ephemera, which include newspaper clippings, catalogs, journals, slides and photography; document the Connie Lewallen Papers, a recent donation from the late curator’s family, representative of Lewallen’s important research and writing on Ireland, 500 Capp Street, and West Coast art movements; assist in coordinating curatorial and archival works for a new public space; cataloging the Paule Anglim Archive Room—honoring the influential San Francisco gallerist—which will function as a dynamic educational and accessible time capsule of Bay Area conceptual art through the work of Ireland and his peers; and research and specify the colonial objects in our collection, an integral focus of our work to examine and decolonize our collection and archives.
Criteria: Collection and Archive Fellows at 500 Capp Street are current or recent graduates (within the last 5 years) of programs in Studio Art, Art Practice, Museum Studies, Curatorial Studies, Art History, Humanities or related fields. Applications are also open to practicing artists who have an interest in curation, archival work or research-based art historical inquiries whose portfolios demonstrate these interests.
500 Capp Street Archive Coordinator Justin Nagle with artist Sanaz Safanasab
Schedule: Part-time, 10-12 hours per week, Temporary [ 1 year ]
Pay Rate: up to $14,000
The Collection and Archive Fellowships at 500 Capp Street begin on Monday, June 12, 2023 and end in June 2024.
Applications Open: Friday, April 14, 2023
Final Application Deadline: Friday, May 19, 2023
*Priority Deadline for Students in Need of Credit: Monday, May 8, 2023
*Credit seeking fellows will be notified by May 20, 2023
For questions or further inquiries email Rebecca Kaufman, rebecca@500cappstreet.org
Documentation of archives and collection of 500 Capp Street, 2021. Photo by Camile Messerley.
About 500 Capp Street
Located in San Francisco’s Mission District, 500 Capp Street is a physical location rooted in conceptual art that was David Ireland’s home. The century-old Italianate-style house at the corner of 20th and Capp Streets was purchased by David Ireland in 1975, and it became the inspiration, locus and repository for some of the most influential works of Bay Area conceptual art in the 1980s and 1990s. During the thirty years he lived in the house, the artist hosted thousands of students for tours, critical dialogues, and meals around his iconic thirteen-seat dining room table, and the house became a great source of creative inspiration for the Bay Area arts community and beyond, evolving into a work of environmental art in itself, and an illustration of Ireland’s seamless integration of art and life.
500 Capp Street’s mission is to encourage artistic experimentation, support new modes of living, and build community— just as David Ireland did during his lifetime.
Current programming at 500 Capp Street offers an incredible mix of online and physical forums, artist residences, dialogs for intergenerational artists and exhibitions, education programs, installations, archival visits, performances, and collection visits, which have engaged the community in completely different ways. The curatorial practice is steeped in experimentation, artist-driven participation, and is process-oriented. It is collaborative, dynamic, and generous. It explores and challenges the boundaries of space, museology, artistic practice, and material. It reflects on important and, at times, uncomfortable questions relevant to critical inquiry.
500 Capp Street is recognized as one of San Francisco’s leading contemporary community art spaces, supporting an exceptionally diverse multigenerational range of artists with dynamic and engaging programming. 500 Capp Street in itself is a living sculpture.
Director Cait Molloy sitting on the 2nd floor of 500 Capp Street. Photo by Geloy Concepcion
Dear Friends:
Since 2016, 500 Capp Street’s Director Cait Molloy has been a generous and welcoming presence at the David Ireland House, enthusiastically sharing the space, the archive, and her knowledge and true love of both with all comers, from middle school students and visiting artists to supporters.
Cait was one of 500 Capp Street’s first Artist Guides, then served as Visitor Service Manager for many years, and became Director in 2019, a position she is now leaving in order to pursue new cultural endeavors. We are all tremendously grateful to Cait for her always energetic and inspired leadership—steadfastly stewarding the organization through the uncertainty of the pandemic and, in its aftermath, embracing a bold vision to make the House an exuberant center for art and community.
Accessibility has been a priority during her tenure as Director. Working with the Board and staff, major initiatives were undertaken to make admission free for all; open the archive widely to students, scholars, and artists; and embrace meaningful partnerships and community engagement initiatives such as 500 Capp Street’s outstanding youth education program developed with City Studio, connecting young people in the Mission District to the ideas and practice of conceptual art.
This spirit of openness has deeply informed Cait’s work over the last four years to refine 500 Capp Street’s mission and reorganize the institution to best support working artists. With her appointment of Lian Ladia as Curator of Exhibitions & Programs, Cait laid the groundwork for a new era of artist engagement as Lian shaped a dynamically collaborative program of artist-driven exhibitions and programs. With Cait’s advocacy and support, the House and archive have become a living laboratory of artistic process, where artists, dancers, architects, and more have been given unprecedented access to 500 Capp Street’s treasures, even living in the space for extended stays—something that would make most collection professionals blanch, but that David Ireland certainly would have loved.
So too has Cait built an expansive view of organizational practice, cultivating a team at the House that brings a collective ethos to leadership and management.
It has become, in fact, an organization that invites involvement. That is evident in the growing circles of support Cait has fostered and sustained with both individual donors and funding institutions.
We are so thankful for the lasting relationships and deep sense of community Cait leaves 500 Capp Street with as she wraps up her tenure April 7. Hers is an enduring legacy and one that our Interim Executive Director Jennifer Rissler will now have the opportunity to advance. Jennifer comes to 500 Capp Street with a wealth of knowledge and experience as both President of the College Art Association and as the former Chief Academic Officer of the San Francisco Art Institute. Please join us in welcoming Jennifer and expressing our deepest gratitude to Cait for all that she has accomplished at 500 Capp Street.
Come and experience the changes twilight brings to the amber walls of David Ireland’s house as you enjoy a performance by accomplished accordionist, musician, and accordion repairman Jonathan Kipp. The evening is part of Ann Hamilton’s project, Process + Place: here • there • then • now, currently on view at two sites: Headlands Center for the Arts and 500 Capp Street. Prior to Ireland’s purchase of 500 Capp Street, the House was the home and repair shop of Paul Greub, a Swiss accordion maker. In her project, Hamilton conjures the early history of 500 Capp Street and connects Ireland’s spaces across time and distance as the day fades to twilight. The evening event is a rare opportunity to experience the convergence of Hamilton’s research and Kipp’s response to it in a live performance.
More information on Ann Hamilton’s project, Process + Place: here • there • then • now can be found here.
About Jonathan Kipp:
Jonathan Kipp is a percussionist, accordionist, teacher, and accordion repairman based in San Francisco. He plays a wide variety of styles, from classical to folk, acoustic to electronic, jazz to pop to avant garde. These days you can find him accompanying the Turkish bands Nakarat and Metanastys.
