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ARTISTS' PREVIEW DAY OF "THE DE YOUNG OPEN" EXHIBITION

10/7/2020

"The de Young Open" exhibition will be open to the public from October 10, 2020 – January 3, 2021.

On October 6, 2020, the de Young museum held a preview of the show for all the featured artists — and it was amazing! Works of art in The de Young Open exhibit are hung “salon-style,” installed edge to edge and floor to ceiling, which enables a maximum number of works to be displayed. The show is housed in the 12,000-square-foot Herbst Exhibition Galleries, featuring 877 artworks by 762 Bay Area artists.

In March 2020, following the unexpected closure of the Fine Arts Museums due to COVID-19, the call for submissions was announced for "The de Young Open", and beginning in June, local artists were encouraged to submit recent or newly created work to the exhibition through an online portal. An impressive 11,514 artworks were submitted by 6,188 artists from across the nine Bay Area counties.

Every artwork image was reviewed anonymously multiple times by a group of qualified jurors who did not know the identities of the artists. The jurors included four Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco curators and three prominent Bay Area artists: Mildred Howard, Hung Liu, and Enrique Chagoya. Given the space limitations in the main exhibition galleries, the seven jurors were faced with the challenging task of selecting and accepting less than 8% of all the works submitted.

The de Young Open continues the museum’s long-standing tradition of engaging the local community and showcasing the talent of Bay Area artists, who will be able to offer their pieces for sale and retain 100% of the proceeds. Access The de Young Open Web Gallery to explore artworks in the exhibition. You will find instructions for purchase on this site. Tom Gehrig's work, Reconnoitering Deception Pass, is hung in Gallery 5 and is numerically catalogued, #404. Click here for a direct link to the piece, which is available for sale.