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Arts & Culture

More Big Burning Man Art Is Coming to San Francisco

A private foundation hopes to place up to 100 large-scale sculptures in public spaces over the next three years.
Sarah Hotchkiss
recycled metal sculpture of mermaid on waterfront
Dana Albany's 'Coralee,' installed at San Francisco Pier 1/2. (Arianna Cunha)

Five months after the installation of R-Evolution, the giant metal sculpture of a nude woman in Embarcadero Plaza, and just two months since the appearance of the sea-serpent Naga in Golden Gate Park, the Sijbrandij Foundation has unveiled the latest piece of “big art” in San Francisco.

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Coralee, an 18-foot-long mermaid made from recycled metal and glass by Bay Area artist Dana Albany, is now installed at the Port of San Francisco’s Pier ½ through September 2026. Made at Chatsworth House in Derbyshire, England for the exhibition Radical Horizons: The Art of Burning Man, the sculpture is, according to the artist, “a symbol of feminine strength and beauty, a modern-day heroine.”

Coralee is also the official harbinger of a major announcement: Over the next three years, the Sijbrandij Foundation plans to fund the installation of up to 100 pieces of large-scale, temporary public art in San Francisco, forming a 34-mile path around the city dubbed the “Big Art Loop.”

“San Francisco would be fine without this,” Sid Sijbrandij told KQED, “but our goal is to activate public spaces, foster civic pride and create shared moments through art.” Sijbrandij, the former CEO of GitLab, is working with the art agency Building 180 for the curation and operations of the Big Art Loop.

So far, the private foundation has spent $2 million to situate eight artworks across the city, at Sunset Dunes, in Golden Gate Park, on Market Street, and along the Embarcadero.

Sijbrandij hopes to get other funders interested in the project, explaining that it will take “a lot of effort and probably other donors” to reach the project goal of 100 artworks.

In addition to Coralee, 11 pieces are planned for installation this fall on Port-owned property along the city’s eastern waterfront, between Heron’s Head Park and Fisherman’s Wharf. A public event on Nov. 6 will celebrate this first phase of the project.


A map of the Big Art Loop incorporates existing, permanent public art pieces like Ruth Asawa’s Aurora along the Embarcadero and Mildred Howard’s Promissory Notes at the Southeast Community Center. Recently installed pieces funded by the Sijbrandij Foundation are currently clustered along the Great Highway, JFK Drive and the Embarcadero. The southern border of the loop, through Ingleside, the Excelsior and McLaren Park, contains just a few pieces of existing public art.

According to Building 180 co-founder and CEO Shannon Riley, the Big Art Loop already has a database of large-scale artwork available for the project. Building 180 and the Sijbrandij Foundation have also put out an open call for existing sculptures over 10 feet in height or length.

Artworks will be selected for the Big Art Loop based on feasibility requirements, scale, availability and cost, along with input from local residents and community groups, said Riley. “Something I think that’s unique and different that we hadn’t done with R-Evolution,” Riley told KQED, “is that we’re really leaning into our partners to help curate and select what they think is going to fit their community. We’re doing more community work than we have in the past.”

giant metal mesh sculpture of nude woman in front of SF Ferry Building, crowd below
People gather for the April 10, 2025 press preview of ‘R-Evolution, a 45-foot metal statue created by Petaluma artist Marco Cochrane, installed at Embarcadero Plaza in San Francisco. (Gina Castro/KQED)

Unlike R-Evolution (renewed for another six months at Embarcadero Plaza), which passed through the Arts Commission for approval — with a modicum of opportunity for public feedback — the artwork heading to the city’s waterfront sites did not go through the Arts Commission, and were presented just once in a publicly accessible meeting of the Port Commission on July 8, 2025.

In a period of public comment at that meeting, representatives from the San Francisco Giants and the Ferry Building voiced their support for the project, along with one call from a member of the general public (in favor) and a prewritten letter from Ariel Sutro, co-founder of Coven, a nonprofit accelerator for “big art.”

Per the Port’s public art program, the person who ultimately approves so-called “unsolicited art” — that is, art proposed by an artist or sponsor for a Port site — is the Port’s executive director.

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Along with Albany’s Coralee, the next phase of the Big Art Loop includes work by artists Peter Hazel, El Nino, Mathias Gmachl, Davis McCarty, Michael Christian, Bryan Tedrick, DeWitt Godfrey and Chris Wollard. Eight of these artists have exhibited their work at Burning Man; many of the pieces slated for installation along the waterfront had their debuts at the festival in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert.

Sijbrandij said he’s attended Burning Man four times. “One of the highlights was the beautiful art,” he said. “We’ve always wondered why you could have that beautiful art there, but it wasn’t anywhere else. And Burning Man is — although it’s a very inclusive community — it’s not very inclusive to get there. It’s expensive and impractical for people to visit. So we’re really excited to bring some of the Burning Man arts to the city. With the caveat that, like, half of it isn’t from Burning Man.”

The Big Art Loop arrives as the San Francisco Arts Commission launches its own effort to situate temporary artworks in public space, in response to an audit of the city’s existing monuments and memorials.

The SFAC-funded public art projects will cap the three-year Shaping Legacy project, which engaged underrepresented communities in discussions about the city’s “commemorative landscape.” Selected works, which will be approved by the arts commission’s Visual Arts Committee and then the full commission (where public feedback is also encouraged), are anticipated to take place between April 2026 and October 2026.

Update Oct. 8: Kristen Berg’s name was removed from the list of artists included in the next phase of the Big Art Loop.

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