$1 M. Jack Whitten Work Leads Sales at San Francisco’s FOG Design+Art

On the FOG Design+Art, a San Francisco artwork honest set throughout two piers on the Fort Mason Heart, the tone for opening evening on Thursday was set by what takes place the occasion’s environs. There, one can discover a slew of valet drivers in white dinner jackets; they’ve returned from choosing up vehicles belonging to VIPs. Inside, drinks flowed, and stationed hors d’oeuvres—together with sushi rolls, dim sum, yuzu-glaze salmon over beet couscous, and extra—may very well be discovered.

This glitzy preview acted as a gala fundraiser for the San Francisco Museum of Fashionable Artwork’s schooling initiatives, with tickets for entry throughout the first hour, at 4 p.m., beginning at $10,000 for simply six tickets. The primary three hours had been comparatively calm: well-heeled VIPs making their methods via the aisles, usually getting stopped each few paces by previous buddies. However the serenity at this preview, one of many essential social occasions of San Francisco’s artwork scene, rapidly light away. By 7 p.m., when tickets dropped to $250 a head, the pier crammed to the brim. The social gathering saved going till 10 p.m., making the opening for much longer than these for many different gala’s.

There was a unique vitality within the air at this 12 months’s version of FOG, a number of sellers instructed ARTnews. This can be partially to do with the truth that the 2025 version got here solely a pair weeks after wildfires devastated Los Angeles, the place a big portion of sellers on the honest hail from.

Even nonetheless, the unpredictably of world occasions can usually have an effect on the gross sales at any honest. “Each time you have a look at a newspaper, you don’t know what to anticipate,” New York seller Ales Ortuzar stated. His gallery is collaborating in FOG for the primary time, prompted by his artist Suzanne Jackson’s retrospective at SFMOMA. In the course of the first few hours, he offered a number of works, together with three by Jackson. “San Francisco has a terrific neighborhood of collectors—it felt like time to return,” he added.

A number of sellers, each native and from elsewhere, instructed ARTnews throughout the preview that the standard of Bay Space collectors stays excessive. “The power of this honest is its neighborhood.  The depth and caliber of establishments, collectors and advisers maintain us coming again, 11 years and counting,” Junette Tang, managing associate of Marian Goodman Gallery, instructed ARTnews.

That sentiment appears to oppose the one usually heard within the New York–primarily based artwork press, which often experiences that galleries have hassle changing tech billionaires from Silicon Valley into common purchasers aiming to construct substantial collections.

“The tech business has generated an immense quantity of wealth and there are a number of rising collectors within the Bay Space,” Sydney Blumenkranz, FOG’s director, instructed ARTnews towards the top of the evening. “They’re desirous about shopping for artwork and figuring out extra about artwork amassing however usually don’t know the place to start. That’s the place a platform like FOG turns into a possibility as a result of they will meet galleries who’re on the town to fulfill them.”

One native collector who has risen in prominence over the previous few years is Sonya Yu, who splits her time between San Francisco and Los Angeles. Yu, who has been listed on ARTnews’s Prime 200 Collectors checklist since 2023, made headlines final month when she gave $900,000 to MoMA PS1 in New York so the establishment can go utterly admission free for the following three years.

“This can be a pivotal second for San Francisco and our artwork ecosystem,” Yu instructed ARTnews. “There are various subtle collectors and devoted patrons who’ve been dedicated to cultivating this metropolis’s arts scene. Working collaboratively with municipal management and artwork professionals, the inventive neighborhood is extra sturdy and various than what the doom loop headlines give credit score to. We endeavor to shine a highlight on our native expertise whereas additionally enthusiastically welcoming a world viewers to our distinctive tradition.”

This version is Blumenkranz’s second as director, although she ran the preview gala for six years earlier than that. Now in its twelfth iteration, the honest’s repute is rebounding, with it receiving essentially the most exhibitor purposes in its historical past this 12 months and its Focus part growing in measurement by 40 p.c, in line with Blumenkranz. “It feels completely different this 12 months,” she stated. “The vitality within the artwork market is again—within the Bay Space a minimum of.” 

FOG has 65 exhibitors this 12 months, which makes it a comparatively manageable honest in comparison with Artwork Basel’s occasions, which generally embody greater than 200 exhibitors. In the course of the preview, it was noticeable simply what number of advisers had been there to accompany their purchasers and assist them navigate the honest. The variety of advisers right here will probably improve over the weekend. Sellers instructed ARTnews that many advisers stroll round with their tech purchasers.

A number of gross sales did happen between 4 p.m. and 6 p.m., although transactions weren’t wholly the purpose of the preview evening. “The great thing about the opening day of FOG is the collective enthusiasm for the San Francisco artwork scene being on the middle of the artwork world,” San Francisco seller Jessica Silverman instructed ARTnews. “It’s prime time.”

Silverman’s sales space options works with all shades of blue in them. On the primary day, the gallery offered Loie Hollowell’s Ultramarine Mind over Yellow Waters (2025) for $450,000. Rupy C. Tut’s Holding on to Hopes, Goals and Needs (2025) for $60,000; Clare Rojas’s Blue Evening (2025) for $60,000; Monet’s Pond by Sam Falls for $60,000; Margo Wolowiec’s Mild Air (2025) for $45,000.

The evening’s priciest work is probably going Jack Whitten’s Photo voltaic House (1971), which Hauser & Wirth offered for greater than $1 million. The gallery additionally offered a number of works within the six figures, together with a 2025 mixed-media work by Rashid Johnson for $750,000; a surprising untitled portray, from the Seventies, by Luchita Hurtado, exhibiting the artist’s nude torso, for $ 695,000; a 2025 entry into Charles Gaines’s “Numbers and Timber: Arizona Sequence” for $595,000; a 2024 Avery Singer portray for $575,000; and two Jeffrey Gibson works for $375,000 and $275,000.

“FOG’s opening day underscores the vitality of San Francisco as a middle for artwork and concepts. The vitality, collaboration, and progress we really feel right here reaffirm our long-term dedication to the area, and we’re proud to be constructing alongside this extraordinary neighborhood,” Amanda Stoffel, a associate and head of gross sales for California at Hauser & Wirth, stated.

David Zwirner, which didn’t disclose costs, stated it offered two of three sculptures by Ruth Asawa—the late Bay Space artist who was the topic of a retrospective at SFMOMA final 12 months, now on the Museum of Fashionable Artwork in New York—from its sales space, in addition to two works on paper by the artist. Different gross sales embody work by Scott Kahn, Walter Worth, Lucas Arruda, and Suzan Frecon.

Gladstone offered a Richard Mayhew portray for $350,000, a Robert Bechtle watercolor for $150,000, a number of drawings from Robert Rauschenberg’s “Kyoto” collection for $110,000 every, an Anicka Yi tempera work for $110,000, a Wangechi Mutu work on paper for $60,000, and an Aaron Gilbert portray for $55,00.

Inside the first hour, Catherine Clark Gallery offered a wall-size textile set up, titled Nonetheless Discovering My Manner Again Residence, by Lehuauakea to a US museum for $225,000. Charles Moffett offered out its presentation of LA-based artist Hopie Hill, with works starting from $8,000 to $16,000. Tina Kim additionally offered works within the six figures, together with a Park Website positioning-Bo portray for $250,000, a Ha Chong-Hyun portray for $250,000, a Kim Tschang-Yeul portray for $150,000, and a textile work by Lee ShinJa for $120,000.

Highlights across the honest embody textile works of merchandise like El Pato and Domino sugar by San Francisco–primarily based artist Jeffrey Sincich at Charlie James; Rember Yahuaracani’s Picaflores Pescadores (Fisher Hummingbirds) at Josh Lilley; and Barbara Stauffacher Solomon’s This isn’t a Ping Pont Desk #4 (1990) at Anthony Meier.

One of many night’s most surprising works was dropped at the honest by way of Los Angeles–primarily based gallery Nonaka-Hill, which is sharing a sales space with Mendes Wooden DM. Nonaka-Hill, which not too long ago opened an area in Kyoto, focuses on Japanese artwork from the twentieth century, a lot of which stays under-exhibited in the USA. For its premiere presentation at FOG, the gallery was exhibiting Yamaguchi Kayō’s 1967 pigment on paper work Mori no Hitotachi (Forest Individuals). A young depiction of 4 primates, this contemporary Nihonga portray is uncommon; it was positioned on reserve for over $380,000.

Gallery Wendi Norris, a San Francisco–primarily based that has been in enterprise for greater than twenty years, can be debuting on the honest, exhibiting the breadth of its program, which pairs Surrealism with modern artwork. On view within the sales space is eight a long time of labor by 9 artists. Among the many works that it had positioned had been Rohini Devasher’s Borrowed Mild 7 (2025) for $22,000; Wolfgang Paalen’s Ardah (1945) for $350,000; Marie Wilson’s Spirit of the Desert (1959–60) for $120,000; and Marie Wilson’s Cedarville (1952–54) for $65,000.

Wendi Norris, the gallery’s founder, instructed ARTnews that she “didn’t understand how the sales space can be acquired as we had been placing it collectively.” These considerations had been unfounded, she stated. “Refined work resonates right here, each with the museum teams on the town and the native well-heeled crowd.”