The San Francisco Arts Commission is the City Agency that champions the arts in San Francisco. We believe that a creative cultural environment is essential to the City's well-being. Our programs integrate the arts into all aspects of City life. The Commission was established by charter in 1932
The towers that support the Golden Gate Bridge's suspension cables are smaller at the top than at the base, emphasizing the tower height of 500 feet above the roadway.

Program Overviews

Art Gallery
The Arts Commission Gallery showcases the work of Bay Area artists at its interim location, the War Memorial Building, 401 Van Ness Ave. It also offers installations in the windows of the Gallery’s former space on Grove Street, and outdoor installations in the City Site lot next to the Grove Street gallery.

Civic Art Collection
The Civic Art Collection program is responsible for cataloguing and conserving the more than 2,000 pieces of art belonging to the City outside its museums.

Civic Design Review
The Civic Design Review Committee of architects and designers conducts a three-phase review of new and renovated civic construction projects to ensure design quality of city structures. Projects include buildings, bridges, viaducts, elevated ways, approaches, gates, fences, lamps or other structures on land belonging to the City and County. The Committee also reviews arches, bridges, approaches and other structures extending over or onto any street, highway, park or other public place belonging to the City and County.

Community Art And Education
This program promotes community revitalization through the arts in economically disadvantaged and underserved areas and supports programs serving special constituencies, such as youth, the homeless, and others. The Community Arts and Education program also oversees the City’s four neighborhood cultural centers. The San Francisco WritersCorps, placing writers in communities where youth live, work, and go to school, is administered by the Community Arts and Education program.

Cultural Equity Grants
Cultural Equity Grants provides support for the enrichment of San Francisco’s multicultural landscape. Four programs offer project-oriented grants to arts organizations and individual artists to nurture the continuing growth of a vibrant arts scene that celebrates the City’s vast ethnic diversity and variety of cultural traditions.

Public Art: Art Enrichment
Courthouses, libraries, City offices, the airport and other civic structures are enlivened through this program, which integrates works by artists in the construction of City buildings and parks, as well as in broader urban design contexts, such as traffic and pedestrian malls and transit corridors.

Street Artistss
San Francisco’s street artists provide residents and visitors with a colorful outdoor marketplace that contributes to the economic life of the city.

Summer in the City
The Summer in the City “pops” concert series provides music lovers with diverse and affordable performances by our renowned San Francisco Symphony orchestra and a sparkling roster of guest artists in Davies Symphony Hall.