Tag: California Historical Society

California Historical Society curator walkthrough with Jon Christensen

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Saturday, May 11, 2013, 12:00PM and 2:00PM
California Historical Society, 678 Mission Street, San Francisco

Please RSVP at curatorwalkthrough.eventbrite.com
This is a timed entry event. Reservations required.

Join CHS guest curator Jon Christensen on a guided tour through the new CHS exhibition, Curating the Bay: Crowdsourcing a New Environmental History. Curating the Bay is a cultural and environmental history of the Bay, which includes over 200 objects, works of art and photographs from their collections, as well as the new crowdsourcing tool Historypin. Historypin allows visitors, either in person or online to contribute their own photos to CHS’ ever-evolving history of the Bay.

Jon Christensen, is the second CHS Curating California scholar-in-residence and adjunct assistant professor and Pritzker fellow at the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability and the Department of History at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Civil Liberties in SF

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For those of you in the SF Bay Area, this is an event you won’t want to miss! It’s FREE and open to the public!

Civil Liberties in San Francisco with Stan Yogi and Elaine Elinson

Wednesday, July 11, 2012, 6:00pm

Join Stan Yogi and Elaine Elinson, co-authors of Wherever There’s a Fight: How Runaway Slaves, Suffragists, Immigrants, Strikers and Poets Shaped Civil Liberties in California, 2010 Gold Medal winner in the California Book Awards.

Wherever There’s a Fight captures the sweeping story of how freedom and equality have grown in California, from the gold rush right up to the precarious post-9/11 era. It connects the experiences of early Chinese immigrants subjected to discriminatory laws and expulsion to those of African Americans who challenged the color bar on San Francisco Streetcars and workers who fought for union contracts on the docks and in the fields.

With vivid, illustrated stories, the authors will take you on a tour of key civil liberties sites in San Francisco – places you may have passed every day without realizing the hidden history they hold. They will also share some treasures they found in the archives of the California Historical Society.

For more information visit the California Historical Society.

New exhibit at Calif. Historical Society: Oyster Farm, featuring the documentary photography of artist Evvy Eisen, opening Oct. 27

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From October 27, 2011 to January 19, 2012, the California Historical Society will host the exhibit Oyster Farm, featuring the documentary photography of artist Evvy Eisen. Evvy Eisen’s photographs will be accompanied by pieces of ephemera and other materials from the rich collections of the California Historical Society. From the CHS’s announcement:

When discussing Oyster Farm, Evvy Eisen explains, “I set out to photograph the workers at the Drakes Bay Oyster Company because they are part of our community, though few of us have ever seen them or understand what they do. They stood before my camera, with dignity and patience. Their portraits communicate information specific to these individuals, but also illuminate essential aspects of the universal human condition.”

The Drakes Bay Oyster Company is located on Drakes Estero in the Point Reyes National Seashore in western Marin County. It is also currently the center of a controversy about whether it will be permitted to remain in operation after 2012. Opposing positions have divided the community and have been argued at the state and national levels as well. This exhibit does not deal with the complex issues involved in these disagreements. Rather it focuses on the people who work at the oyster farm, who are silent and stoic in the face of an uncertain future. Their portraits communicate information specific to them but also illuminate essential aspects of the universal human condition and reveal unrecognized facets of daily life at the Drakes Bay Oyster Company. This exhibit creates a place where differences can be set aside, and where the people portrayed can be appreciated in a new light.

Evvy Eisen was born and educated in New York City and has lived and worked in Marin County since 1971. She specializes in environmental portraits and often works on long-term projects, portraying the people involved in socially relevant issues.

Please join us for the Oyster Farm opening reception on November 16 at 5:30 p.m. and meet artist Evvy Eisen. The event is free and open to the public.

Oyster Farm is on view at the California Historical Society from October 27, 2011 through January 19, 2012. For more information about this exhibition visit http://www.californiahistoricalsociety.org.