San Francisco Arts Education Project

10/13/2026

Free All-Ages Workshop this Saturday!

Join us on Saturday, October 17, 1-3 pm for a FREE Workshop designed by SFArtsED Artist Mentor Megan Broughton. Draw or write you own colorful textures and patterns using color pencils, crayons, construction paper, and rubbing plates. Then use oversized hole punches to create many circles of varying sizes from your drawings. We’ll then use those as collage material to create artworks in the style of Howardena Pindell’s abstract circle collages. Stop by and jump in at any part of the process, whether you want to spend some time exploring color and texture, help cut out circles, make your own collage, or do all three! This workshop is free for all ages, materials will be provided.

Megan Broughton is an interdisciplinary artist based in San Francisco, CA, addressing the climate crisis, loss, transformation, and the sublime. Her work stems from onsite study in the Arctic, where she has been an artist in residence with MaréMotrice in Greenland and The Arctic Circle Residency in Svalbard. Exhibition highlights include Berkeley Art Center, Richmond Art Center, and Minnesota Street Project. She received an Emerging Individual Artist Fellowship from the California Arts Council in 2023 and is currently an Artist in Residence at The Exploratorium in San Francisco. Megan holds a BFA from the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts).

this workshop is made possible with support from Winslow & Associates

10/08/2026

We’re proud to share that SFArtsED is once again a San Francisco Grants for the Arts grantee! 🎉
The Arts Commission and Grants for the Arts recently announced a combined investment in the arts totaling over $25 million, supporting nearly 400 local artists and arts organizations.
This investment will directly support SFArtsED’s work over the next year to help us continue creating, connecting and contributing to San Francisco’s vibrant arts community.
We’re grateful for this investment in our organization and in the city’s vibrant arts and cultural ecosystem. Thank you, .gfta for supporting local artists and arts organizations! All the details are at sf.gov/artscommission

10/05/2026

10/05/2026

Watching young performers help create work in response to a visual art exhibition is thrilling, especially when the artwork is Seyed Alavi’s gorgeous rugs and tapestries in his “Layla & Majnun” show and the Artist Mentors guiding the show are Natalie Greene and Emily Keeler. The performances on Saturday as part of the exhibition’s opening celebration were stunning. Such sophisticated, beautiful and moving work.

10/03/2026

Layla & Majnun opens today!

Join us 4–6pm today for the opening reception for Seyed Alavi's exhibition 𝐿𝒶𝓎𝓁𝒶 & 𝑀𝒶𝒿𝓃𝓊𝓃, with a special dance performance which will activate the gallery space.

Created in collaboration with Seyed Alavi and in response to his exhibition, a special dance-based work will activate the liminal spaces between viewers and artworks in the gallery. Drawing on Alavi’s image manipulation and re-assembly techniques, the performers reimagine figure-ground relationships and explore the tensions between presence and absence, longing and love.

𝐿𝒶𝓎𝓁𝒶 & 𝑀𝒶𝒿𝓃𝓊𝓃
Inspired by the 12th-century poem by poet Nizami Ganjavi, Seyed Alavi’s solo exhibition Layla and Majnun reinterprets the ageless tale of love, longing and separation through an immersive display of two juxtaposed textile series which hang suspended in the gallery. Presented against a backdrop of dark blue walls, the installation invites the viewer to consider the physical distance between these two archetypal lovers to be a construct.

with performances by:
Agnes Post, Aida Samimi, Asher Wofford, Augustine Berenguer, Eve Belopolskaya, Liliana Dawson, Mira Woerner, Olivia Gale, Rosie Thau, Sage Zamora, Selah McGinley-Pak.
Directed by: Natalie Greene, in collaboration with Emily Keeler and Tiersa Nureyev and Pete Belkin. Sound Direction by Stephen Parris.

10/01/2026

Seyed Alavi: Layla and Majnoon
Artists' reception and performance
Saturday, October 3, 4–6pm.
1275 Minnesota street, SF

Inspired by the 12th-century poem by poet Nizami Ganjavi, Seyed Alavi’s solo exhibition Layla and Majnun reinterprets the ageless tale of love, longing and separation through an immersive display of two juxtaposed textile series which hang suspended in the gallery. Presented against a backdrop of dark blue walls, the installation invites the viewer to consider the physical distance between these two archetypal lovers to be a construct.

Besotted by Layla, Majnun obsessively serenades her with poetry, leading to condemnation by Layla’s father, who forbids their love and forces her to marry another. A banished Majnun turns to the forest to live in exile amongst the animals as Layla perishes of a broken heart. In spite of their separation and physical distance, their bond transcends the material world to form an iconic tale of eternal love.

Weaving together the visual languages of Persian miniature painting and rug design, the series of works depicting Layla invites viewers to reimagine the distinction between figure and ground. Majnun exists in a state of perpetual formation, his levitating body suggests a state of transcendence and focus while the unraveling materiality of the tapestries evokes the unruly nature of a figure whose name has become synonymous with madness.
- - -
Performance: Layla and Majnun
Created in collaboration with Seyed Alavi and in response to his exhibition, this dance-based work activates the liminal spaces between viewers and artworks in the gallery. Drawing on Alavi’s image manipulation and re-assembly techniques, the performers reimagine figure-ground relationships and explore the tensions between presence and absence, longing and love.

With performances by a group of the SF ArtsED Players:
Agnes Post, Aida Samimi, Asher Wofford, Augustine Berenguer, Eve Belopolskaya, Liliana Dawson, Mira Woerner, Olivia Gale, Rosie Thau, Sage Zamora, Selah McGinley-Pak.
Directed by: Natalie Greene, in collaboration with Emily Keeler, Tiersa Nureyev Sound Direction by Stephen Parris.

09/28/2026

Join us this Saturday, October 3rd, 4–6PM for the opening reception and performance for Seyed Alavi's Layla and Majnun.

Borrowing the title from Nizami Ganjavi’s 12th-century poem Layla and Majnun, the exhibition features two new series of works by Seyed Alavi. Layla brings together the visual languages of Persian miniature painting and Persian rug design. Figures, patterns, colors, and motifs appear to belong to different worlds, yet gradually become inseparable. The series of tapestries representing Majnun is also fragmentary, his figure emerging from calligraphic strokes which form his gesture. Separated from Layla, Majnun's longing gradually carries him beyond the desire for the beloved and toward the discovery of love itself – a force which forms an inseparable bond in spite of their distance.

Created in collaboration with Seyed Alavi and in response to his exhibition, a dance-based performance will activate the liminal spaces between viewers and artworks in the gallery. Drawing on Alavi’s image manipulation and re-assembly techniques, the performers reimagine figure-ground relationships and explore the tensions between presence and absence, longing and love.

With performances by a group of the SFArtsED Players:
Agnes Post, Aida Samimi, Asher Wofford, Augustine Berenguer, Eve Belopolskaya, Liliana Dawson, Mira Woerner, Olivia Gale, Rosie Thau, Sage Zamora, Selah McGinley-Pak. Directed by: Natalie Greene, in collaboration with Emily Keeler and Tiersa Nureyev. Sound Direction by Stephen Parris.

The exhibition will be on view through November 14.

09/28/2026

Join us this Saturday, October 3, 4-6pm for the opening reception for Seyed Alavi's exhibition Layla and Majnun, with a special performance activating the space.

Borrowing the title from Nizami Ganjavi’s 12th-century poem Layla and Majnun, the exhibition features two new series of works by Seyed Alavi. Layla brings together the visual languages of Persian miniature painting and Persian rug design. Figures, patterns, colors, and motifs appear to belong to different worlds, yet gradually become inseparable. The series of tapestries representing Majnun is also fragmentary, his figure emerging from calligraphic strokes which form his gesture. Separated from Layla, Majnun's longing gradually carries him beyond the desire for the beloved and toward the discovery of love itself – a force which forms an Indissoluble bond in spite of their distance.

Created in collaboration with Seyed Alavi and in response to his exhibition, a dance-based work will activate the liminal spaces between viewers and artworks in the gallery. Drawing on Alavi’s image manipulation and re-assembly techniques, the performers reimagine figure-ground relationships and explore the tensions between presence and absence, longing and love.

With performances by a group of the SFArtsED Players:
Agnes Post, Aida Samimi, Asher Wofford, Augustine Berenguer, Eve Belopolskaya, Liliana Dawson, Mira Woerner, Olivia Gale, Rosie Thau, Sage Zamora, Selah McGinley-Pak. Directed by: Natalie Greene, in collaboration with Emily Keeler and Tiersa Nureyev. Sound Direction by Stephen Parris.

09/16/2026

This Saturday!

You are cordially invited to join Beth Grossman and Jeff Raz for a Revolutionary Tea Party

A Revolutionary Tea Party:
A Call to Tea, Liberty, and Civil Discourse
Saturday, September 19, 2:00-4:00 PM
SFArtsED gallery, 1275 Minnesota St., SF

Over tea, participants will use quill pens and dark tea to visually comment on and edit a tablecloth printed with the Declaration of Independence. Together, we will consider its promises, what they have meant over time, and what they might mean today.

Beth Grossman reimagines historic texts and civic ideals through quill-pen calligraphy, typography, and participatory performance. Her artwork brings the past into conversation with the present, using beauty, humor, and participation to invite fresh perspectives. For more than a decade, as an “act of civil obedience,” she has publicly scribed the United States Constitution with a quill pen on vintage money bags, examining the influence of financial interests on democracy.

Jeff Raz has performed nationally and internationally for decades, starring in Cirque du Soleil’s Corteo, the Pickle Family Circus, Make*A*Circus and many others, and his four books are inspired by his career. He has also co-founded six arts organizations and, for the last dozen years, worked globally as a communications and leadership consultant.

This event is part of an ongoing, all-ages series of workshops presented by the San Francisco Arts Education Project. A Revolutionary Tea Party is made possible with support from the Law Office of Cavin and Marks.

09/11/2026

Megan Broughton: False Horizon opens tomorrow, 4–6 pm.
Its First Saturday at Minnesota Street Project, stop by to see Megan's phenomenal installation of Copperplate etchings!

False Horizon references a mirage—an optical illusion caused by atmospheric temperature inversions that bend light and create a deceptive visual boundary above or below the true sea or land horizon. Drawing on her experience at the MaréMotrice artist residency aboard a sailboat in the waters between Greenland and Iceland, the artist reflects on what is visible and what remains hidden to the eye in the shifting patterns of weather. Pushing the alchemical limits of copper plate etching, her printmaking process oscillates between control and chance, layering variations of forms reminiscent of floating ice on water. Like an iceberg, much of which remains submerged, the work invites the viewer to imagine what lies beneath the surface.

Megan Broughton is an interdisciplinary artist based in San Francisco, CA, addressing the climate crisis, loss, transformation, and the sublime. Her work stems from onsite study in the Arctic, where she has been an artist in residence with MaréMotrice in Greenland and The Arctic Circle Residency in Svalbard. Exhibition highlights include Berkeley Art Center, Richmond Art Center, and Minnesota Street Project. She received an Emerging Individual Artist Fellowship from the California Arts Council in 2023 and is currently an Artist in Residence at The Exploratorium in San Francisco. Megan holds a BFA from the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts).

False Horizon is presented as part of Teaching/Practice, a rotating bi-monthly showcase of SFArtsED Artist Mentors’ works, paired with short interviews about their teaching and art practice. Presented adjacent to our gallery space upstairs at 1275 Minnesota street, the display will be visible during the building’s normal open hours, 11am – 6pm Tuesday through Saturday.

more info:
https://www.sfartsed.org/event/teachingpractice