SFO's One-of-a-Kind Art Museum

Olivia Allen Price: Between Thanksgiving and New Years Day 6.3 million passengers are expected to travel through San Francisco International Airport. And one of them is today’s question asker.

Barry Asin: I’m Barry Asin and I lived in Palo Alto for the past 23 years or so. 

Olivia Allen Price: Barry flies about once a month. A lot of the time he’s rushing to make his flight or eager to get home after a long trip, but every once in a while, he’s got some time to kill at the airport.That’s when he’s especially grateful for the art exhibits dotted throughout the terminals at SFO. 

Barry Asin: I do have a memory of having like an hour’s long delay and had just like a fascinating time reading through all the exhibits as something better to do than be on my phone.  I can remember like a history of United Airlines or you know when they have old artifacts and things like that or a history of radio I think it was.  

Olivia Allen Price: In fact, SFO is the only airport museum accredited by the American Alliance of Museums. Barry wants to know how it all works.

Barry Asin: I’d like to know more about the art and history exhibits that I’ve seen at SFO, particularly on the walkway to Terminal 3 and in the International Terminal, and what’s behind them, and who makes the decisions about these, and how do they decide what goes in there and what sorts of things can we expect in the future.

Olivia Allen Price: Today on the show, we’re headed to SFO…behind security…even though we aren’t traveling anywhere. We’ll meet the curators of this unique museum, check out what’s on display now and give you the inside scoop on how you can see it all for free. That’s right, no flight required. All that, coming up.

Olivia Allen Price: We’re headed to San Francisco International Airport with Ericka Cruz Guevarra from The Bay podcast to check out all the cool art there. I’ll let Ericka take it from here. 

Ericka Gruz Guevarra: I’m here at San Francisco International Airport in front of the Aviation Museum and Library. Daniel, can you introduce yourself for me and tell me what you do here?

Daniel Calderon: Sure, Daniel Calderon, one of the exhibition curators at SFO Museum.

 Ericka Cruz Guevarra: And I’m also here with Nicole. Nicole, would you mind introducing yourself as well? 

Nicole Mullen: My name is Nicole Mullen and I’m curator in charge of exhibitions at SFO Museum at the San Francisco International Airport.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Can you talk a little bit more maybe, Daniel, about the specific work that you do as a curator for an airport? Sure.

Daniel Calderon: Currently we have 25 sites throughout the airport terminals. Nicole and I are among an excess of 30 to 40 full-time staff here at SFO Museum involved in all aspects of production. And our role is to really drive the content of these exhibitions. So not having a real permanent collection to draw from, Nicole and are always on look out for. Exciting, engaging collections, things to represent at SFO Museum. You know, we do have exhibitions that are pre-security, but with some advanced notice we can accommodate tours post-security like we’ll do today.

Nicole Mullen: Our program was created in 1980. We are the only museum in an airport accredited by the American Alliance of Museums. So everything from vintage telephones to women in Afrofuturism to Chinese ceramics and Chinese basketry you can see right now on display.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Well, Daniel, I know you’re going to take us over to the first exhibition that we’re going to look at. And I believe it’s the one that you curated, right? Can you tell us a little bit about where we’re heading and what we’re about to go check out?

 Daniel Calderon: Sure, we’re in the International Terminal main hall. We’re going to walk along the back of the main hall to the middle of the hall. We have the AIDS Memorial Quilt installed there.

 Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Great, let’s go ahead and take a look. I was actually traveling earlier this year, Daniel, and I stopped by this area, the AIDS Memorial Quilt exhibition. Can you tell us a little bit about what’s in here?

 Daniel Calderon: We have these two huge galleries, about 50 feet long each. The quilt was born in 1987 here in San Francisco. Only six blocks of the quilt are on display out of more than 6,000 that actually make up the quilt. Each block is 12 foot square, 12 foot by 12 foot, made from panels that are three by six feet. And the three by 6 foot dimension was decided upon… Because that was the approximate size of a human grave. At that point the federal government had decided essentially to turn a blind eye on the AIDS epidemic and you can imagine living in San Francisco then, you know, seeing your friends and family members dying all around you. Cleve Jones, Gert McMullen, other members of the NAMES project were just, they were fed up, they’re frustrated, they are angry. And in 1987, starting in the spring… And working up to October of that year, they created 1,920 panels that were sewn into these 12-foot blocks. They all piled in a van that somebody donated into a box truck, and they drove to D.C. And they covered a good portion of the National Mall in protest. There are more than 50,000 panels in the quilt now, and those over 6,000 blocks, 110,000 names are represented. It’s just a drop in the bucket, the millions of people who have died from HIV and AIDS-related illness.

 Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Sort of a range, like some of them are really intricate, like this one that we’re looking at right here has painted hands, I mean like paint all over it, but also some really intricate stitching, and I mean this one here has names spelled out with like individual buttons.

 Daniel Calderon: With buttons. So now, you know, now we’re at a panel that was made in 1993 and by this time the quilt has grown. So now you’re seeing that. You’re seeing traditional quilt making techniques in addition to the buttons that you noticed. And that is one panel that we have some information on. It was made for Margaret Janet Emmett by her daughter. And she recalled her mother as being… Someone who was very, very eccentric in a good way. She took the family to museums, she loved to craft, she loved to make things, and her daughter wrote that she felt the rendering of her names and buttons sort of conveyed, at least to her, that eccentricity in a very positive way.

 Ericka Cruz Guevarra: There’s a nice variety of buttons sort of represented there. And then it also says 1931 to 1985, my mother, my friend, I love you forever. You mentioned earlier, Daniel, that one of the things that you aim to do when you’re picking what you curate for the museum is you want things to be very colorful. And I feel like this exhibition is definitely representative of that. There’s lot of really bright. Beautiful color, very eye-catching in this otherwise very gray building. What do you want people to feel when they see this and come across this?

 Daniel Calderon: I hope that, you know, being so visually beautiful, I hope they would be drawn in. Younger people now don’t even know what the Ace Memorial Quilt is, having that distance from the onset of the epidemic, right? But as they read and they learn, potentially draw inspiration from that. So, it’s a very important exhibition. We’re currently walking past the AIDS Memorial Quilt exhibition in the International Terminal Main Hall towards the A gates, International Terminals A gates on the departures level. So that we can go through the security checkpoint there to view an exhibition in Harvey Milk Terminal One on women of Afrofuturism.

 Bao Li: So we’re going to go through security, we’re gonna go through security just like any normal passenger would. My name is Baoli, I’m the Associate Curator of Public Engagement at SFO Museum. I run tours for the post security exhibitions at Sfo Museum. We have scheduled tours once a week. However, we do have unscheduled tours if people can’t make the time that the scheduled tours occur. They are free, although they do require a bit of paperwork. And so there is a bit of a process that you need to go through to be able to come through TSA Security without a valid flight ticket. Everything goes in the gray bin, you do not need to take off your shoes anymore. What we will do is that this first person in line will just want to see that you have a badge, so just show them your badge. The second person at the security line will ask for both your badge and your ID. They will look at your badge, look at your ID, look at your face, scan your badge, look at the ID, your face and then scan your bag a second time. After that, we’ll go to the place with the gray bins. Everything goes in the gray bin except for your badge. Keep your badge on at all times. Okay, perfect. In the fiscal year of June 2024 to June 2025, the airport had 54 million passengers arrive and depart from the airport. And the other thing is that the airport is never not open, so we are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, which means that pieces of art are actually blasted with light levels. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and they are potentially touched by 54 million passengers. We have a lot of mosaics because they are very robust, they are resilient, they are easy to clean. Much more than paintings or anything like that. And so we actually are going to have more public art in the new Terminal 3 and what has been pitched has been a lot more mosaics because they are very easy to clean.

 Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Now we are walking past Security to see the Women in Afrofuturism exhibit that Nicole curated.

 Nicole Mullen: Just past Security and Harvey Milk Terminal 1, we are standing outside of Green Apple Books and Ritual Coffee. And in between those two vendors, you have a beautiful intimate space where we’re currently featuring Women of Afrofuturism.

 Ericka Cruz Guevarra: It is nice to know that there are these little corners of the airport that you can escape to after a stressful walk through security.

 Nicole Mullen: Absolutely. You know, when we opened the space we were worried that people would just pass right by, but really people are intrigued and they’re lured into the space. And this is really fun because when you first step into the exhibition you see local Oakland Bay area based artist, Celia C. Peters, who is a filmmaker and artist. So we’re showing her proof-of-concept godspeed, you and see that. Animation and you can also interact with her lenticular print.

 Ericka Cruz Guevarra: And it’s this woman who’s sort of looking over her shoulder. She’s sort blue in color, has blue lipstick, and is wearing very futuristic, aluminum-looking clothing.

 Nicole Mullen: And very confident and welcoming you into the space. So it’s a special print made on plastic and it has three changes. So if you start here, you see the woman with her eyes open and if you look a little further, she turns green and gold with a pink background. So it changes a little bit. Yes, and then step again and you’ll see her. With a little bit of a smile now, and she suggested the idea to start the show like this with this strong woman in space.

 Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Maybe Nicole, if you could explain this specific corner of the exhibition.

 Nicole Mullen: Right now we’re looking at futuristic fashion design in the last bay of the exhibition and what you’re seeing here is work done by Afetassi, the artist. She is a local San Francisco based artist, born and raised here. She currently resides in Bayview. She’s created these kind of space helmets in a way, but you’re looking really bright red and yellow flowers that she’s created into a space helmet.

 Ericka Cruz Guevarra: I wonder as the person who curated this exhibit, why was it important for you to really show and highlight Afrofuturism at SFO?

 Nicole Mullen: Well, I really thought it would be wonderful for our audience. You know, when you’re talking about Afrofuturism, this is a social, political, and artistic movement. It examines the past. It questions the present. And it looks at how we can re-sculpt futures, both real and imagined. And I think doing that through the eyes of black women, especially, and their role in the movement, as Ingrid LaFleur had said, it really is like a warm hug. You know, when you come in here and you get to celebrate all these women.

 Ericka Cruz Guevarra: And as we’re walking through here, it’s, I mean, a pretty short-ish. I feel like it takes you from one end of the airport to another end of the airport. You see people, some people just sort of walking through, but you also see, I see someone who’s stopping and really looking at the stuff. What is it like for you when you see people coming into this hallway and looking at the things you’ve curated?

Nicole Mullen: It’s really amazing and it’s really an honor to be able to bring this type of material to the public. We have a QR code to a visitor survey and so we get responses from the public all the time and a lot of people have been very moved by this exhibition and you don’t have to know a lot about the subject matter. You don’t need to pay a ticket to go see a museum exhibition. And a lot of times people… You know, they may have not thought about it and they stumble upon our exhibition and they feel drawn to it or excited by it. And so being able to reach that vast general audience is what I really love about the job.

 Olivia Allen Price: That story was brought to you from the producers of The Bay podcast, including Ericka Cruz Guevarra, Jessica Kariisa and Alan Montecillo. Now, Barry also wanted a sneak peak into upcoming exhibits.

Daniel Calderon: We have an exhibition on low rider bicycles, that is opening in the long cases. It’ll take the place of AIDS Memorial Quilt. It’s really a special exhibition that says a lot about just community and family. Some really good surprises I think for people who may not understand the low riding community.

Olivia Allen Price: Look for that in April, Barry. And thanks for the question.

Bay Curious is made in San Francisco at member-supported KQED.

Our show is made by Katrina Schwartz, Christopher Beale and me, Olivia Allen-Price.

With extra support from Maha Sanad, Katie Sprenger, Jen Chien, Ethan Toven-Lindsey and everyone on team KQED.

Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. San Francisco Northern California Local.