Art I'm Looking At: Shows featuring SFAI artists (March 2025)

The Museum of Sonoma County (425 7th St., Santa Rosa, CA 95401 (707) 579-1500) is now in the middle of a show called "UNRULY: North Bay Artists from the San Francisco Art Institute" featuring art by students and faculty at the now-defunct San Francisco Art Institute, which for 150 years fostered artistic experimentation in the San Francisco Bay Area, influencing generations (closed in 2022). The show of about 30 pieces by 18 artists occupies most of the museum's large central space. The show runs through July 8, 2025.

Local gallery owner Dennis Calabi, inspired by the Unruly show, has opened a show of his own at The Calabi Gallery (456 10th St., Santa Rosa, CA, (707) 781-7070) also featuring work by artists and students of the SFAI but mostly of an earlier generation. Dennis's holdings are rich in work by SFAI artists from the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, nicely complementing the Unruly show, which mainly presents more recent work by living artists that were associated with SFAI. Both shows are worth seeing, but The Calabi Gallery show is perhaps the more rewarding as it is broader in scope, presenting more than 100 high-caliber works.