Street Cred: The Creation, Commodification, and Exhibition of San Francisco's Mission Street Art Community"

Abstract

Street artists based in San Francisco’s Mission District have been creating art to resist the actions of gentrifiers who started moving into the district following the technology boom of 1993. Examining how the Mission art community has been negatively affected within the district and inaccurately represented by the contemporary art world provides insight into how similar artistic communities may be better sustained. In the midst of the Mission’s gentrification, a number of its artist-residents began to gain international art world success and were given the moniker “Mission School,” by art critics and curators. Many of those artists have resisted the “Mission School” label and have expressed conflicted feelings about compromising their desire for free access to art in exchange for admission to the commercial contemporary art world, where their work is bought and sold. The success of these artists, and the exclusion of others who were fundamental to the formation of their community, has reinforced the invisibility that both groups experienced from gentrifiers. An examination of the curatorial methods and criticisms of recent Mission Street Art exhibitions provides a basis to explore how the exhibition of artists who are celebrated as part of a highly respected yet endangered urban artistic scene affects their community.