The Luggage Store Gallery presents Streetopia, a large-scale group exhibition totake place in venues throughout downtown San Francisco this coming May 18 through June 23. Streetopia will bring neighborhood residents together with at least 132 artists, performers, writers, filmmakers, activists, thinkers, and public policy makers in venues in the heart of the city, to address the show’s themes of Utopian aspiration for the city. The exhibition will be centered on the installation of a giant, collectively planned city to be built within the gallery in collaboration with numerous selected artists. Simultaneously an additional art and event space will be installed at the nearby Luggage Store Annex at the 509 Cultural Center at the other end of the neighborhood. One part show and one part elaborate public experiment, the show will spill out of these galleries into the surrounding neighborhood with projects that include public murals, art on area billboards, installations in vacant storefronts,performances in the streets, and events at nearby community gardens. Inspired by San Francisco’s long tradition of Utopian political and art movements, the “city” installed at The Luggage Store will include a Free Cafe, a theater, a gallery/studio, and a library. Streetopia will host free performances, teachings, and talks in the city every day for the show’s month-long run and, thus,will provide a temporary space that offers opportunities for participation, agency,critical thinking, learning, sharing of ideas, and tools for community building that will reverberate in the real city after the city we build in the gallery is long gone.The café, event space, and other rooms will give audience members the opportunity to meet in and engage with the exhibition on a daily basis and to propose their own events for the show.
