# The 8 best gallery shows in San Francisco in October 2026 > Lee Friedlander at Fraenkel, Lava Thomas at Jessica Silverman, Picasso to Calder at Berggruen and a David Driskell survey in the Dogpatch: the exhibitions to see in San Francisco this month, and when they close. San Francisco · Best shows · By On View, updated Oct 2, 2026 · Tags: San Francisco, Exhibitions, October 2026, Photography, Painting, Galleries, What to see October is the hinge of San Francisco’s gallery year. The shows that opened the autumn season in September are in their last weeks, and most of them close on or around October 24; then, in the final days of the month, the galleries turn over almost at once, with new exhibitions at Fraenkel, Berggruen and Jessica Silverman opening on October 28 and 29. Go early in the month for the current round and come back at the end for the next. These are the eight gallery exhibitions we would not miss, chosen for the work rather than the name on the door, with the dates and addresses from our listings and a link to each show’s own page, where the pictures are. The museums have a big month too, with [RM’s collection at SFMOMA](https://onview.so/sf/sfmoma/rm-x-sfmoma-between-you-and-me) from October 3 and the [Graciela Iturbide retrospective](https://onview.so/sf/sfmoma/between-two-worlds) there through November; they are in the questions at the end. For the galleries themselves, see [the 8 best art galleries in San Francisco](https://onview.so/guides/best-art-galleries-san-francisco). ## 1. Lee Friedlander: *Maria* - Sep 10 – Oct 24, 2026 (on view) - At [Fraenkel Gallery](https://onview.so/sf/fraenkel.md), Union Square · 49 Geary St, 4th Floor, Suite 450 - The show on On View: https://onview.so/sf/fraenkel/maria ![](https://images.onview.so/62403115433c4c7f.webp) Friedlander has photographed his wife Maria since the 1950s, and this show of about fifty pictures follows the two of them through marriage, parenthood and old age: Maria reading, driving, on the phone, lying in the sun, sometimes with his shadow falling into the frame. It is as much a record of how one of the great American photographers’ way of seeing changed over seventy years as it is a portrait of a marriage, and it is quietly devastating. A new hardcover book accompanies the show, which closes on October 24. Fraenkel follows it on October 29 with Robert Adams’s photographs shown beside their original contact sheets, so a visit in the last days of the month catches the changeover. ## 2. Lava Thomas: *Lineage* - Sep 10 – Oct 24, 2026 (on view) - At [Jessica Silverman](https://onview.so/sf/jessica-silverman.md), Chinatown · 621 Grant Ave - The show on On View: https://onview.so/sf/jessica-silverman/lineage ![](https://images.onview.so/77e7ee27188aaa0c.webp) Eight large graphite and Conté drawings of the artist’s ancestors in post-Emancipation Texas, drawn from family photographs and from the obituaries, pension files and other records she has copied out by hand. One drawing, nearly eight feet wide, shows the 1882 schoolhouse where generations of her relatives were taught. Thomas has been one of the Bay Area’s most serious artists for years, and this, her first exhibition with the gallery, is the fullest statement of her work the city has seen. The drawings travel next to the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth. Upstairs, in the same building, [Sadie Barnette’s twenty-eighth solo show](https://onview.so/sf/jessica-silverman/28) introduces her Dots drawings and an eleven-foot wooden text sculpture; both close on October 24. ## 3. *Defining the Century: Modern Visionaries from Picasso to Calder* - Sep 10 – Oct 22, 2026 (on view, closing soon) - At [Berggruen Gallery](https://onview.so/sf/berggruen.md), SoMa · 10 Hawthorne St - The show on On View: https://onview.so/sf/berggruen/defining-the-century-modern-visionaries-from-picasso-to-calder ![](https://images.onview.so/279455985b2cb948.webp) Ten artists who remade painting and sculpture in the twentieth century, in a single compact survey: Braque, Calder, Gris, Kandinsky, Klee, Léger, Matisse, Miró, Picasso and Tanguy. Among the works are two Calders, a 1942 Kandinsky, a 1956 Picasso and paintings by Miró from 1946 and 1971. It is the kind of display one expects to pay to see across the street at SFMOMA, and here it is free. The show closes on October 22, earlier than most this month. Also at Berggruen until October 29 is [Liam Everett’s first solo show with the gallery](https://onview.so/sf/berggruen/the-passenger), recent paintings built from ink, oil, sand and wood ash and worn back to faint horizons. ## 4. Wolfgang Paalen and Alice Rahon: *Worlds Gone and to Come* - Sep 10 – Oct 24, 2026 (on view) - At [Gallery Wendi Norris](https://onview.so/sf/wendi-norris.md), Jackson Square · 436 Jackson St - The show on On View: https://onview.so/sf/wendi-norris/worlds-gone-and-to-come ![](https://images.onview.so/ba99544c31b306b7.webp) The first two-person exhibition of the Surrealist painters, who were married from 1934 to 1947 and left Europe together for Mexico City in 1939. Rarely seen paintings and works on paper set Paalen’s fumage pictures, drawn with the smoke of a candle, beside Rahon’s canvases textured with sand. Paalen later moved to the Bay Area and helped found the Dynaton group here, which makes Jackson Square the right place to see them. Gallery Wendi Norris has spent two decades building the case for these artists, and this show is a chapter in that argument rather than a one-off. Through October 24. ## 5. *250 Years, Indigenous Futures* - Sep 15 – Nov 7, 2026 (on view) - At [Haines Gallery](https://onview.so/sf/haines-gallery.md), Fort Mason · 2 Marina Boulevard, Building C - The show on On View: https://onview.so/sf/haines-gallery/250-years-indigenous-futures ![](https://images.onview.so/9a162d06950c160a.webp) Eight Native American artists show painting, drawing, sculpture, photography and film in the year of the United States’ 250th anniversary, which the exhibition treats as one moment in far longer Indigenous histories rather than a date to celebrate. The artists are Victoria Grace Canby, Jordan Ann Craig, Sky Hopinka, Brad Kahlhamer, Terran Last Gun, Jamie Okuma, Wendy Red Star and Keith Secola. Highlights include Hopinka’s film linking the 1969–71 occupation of Alcatraz, visible from the gallery’s front door, with the Cahokia Mounds in Illinois; Last Gun’s new drawings on antique ledger sheets; and a beaded deerskin handbag by Okuma. At Fort Mason through November 7. ## 6. Sandow Birk: *An Illustrated History of the Present* - Aug 29 – Nov 7, 2026 (on view) · North and South Galleries - At [Catharine Clark Gallery](https://onview.so/sf/catharine-clark-gallery.md), Design District · 248 Utah St - The show on On View: https://onview.so/sf/catharine-clark-gallery/an-illustrated-history-of-the-present ![](https://images.onview.so/7e14cdb9c45853e6.webp) Thirty-five years of Birk’s painting, drawing, printmaking, ceramics and film fill both of Catharine Clark’s galleries, in a survey timed to the gallery’s own thirty-fifth anniversary. Birk pairs older works from series such as Prisonation, In Smog and Thunder and American Qur’an with new or reworked pieces that answer them; the earliest are two large 1992 paintings made with the graffiti artist REALM after the Los Angeles uprising, both revised this year. The show also debuts new etchings from his Trumpagruel series, printed in Portland, Oregon. The gallery marks its anniversary with a celebration on October 15; the exhibition runs through November 7, and Hosfelt next door turns over on October 17, so mid-month is the time to visit Utah Street. ## 7. David C. Driskell: *Wake Up Everybody* - Oct 2 – Dec 19, 2026 (on view) - At [Jenkins Johnson Gallery](https://onview.so/sf/jenkins-johnson-gallery.md), Dogpatch · 1275 Minnesota St, #200 - The show on On View: https://onview.so/sf/jenkins-johnson-gallery/wake-up-everybody ![](https://images.onview.so/90ffd8f1cbde3ad6.webp) Paintings, collages and prints by the late artist, educator and curator, made between 1960 and the early 2000s. Driskell taught for nearly forty years and did more than almost anyone to write Black artists into the history of American art, while keeping up a studio practice that moved between figuration and abstraction, African and Christian imagery, jazz and the landscapes of his years in Maine. The title comes from the 1975 Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes song, chosen to honor his role as a teacher. The show opens on October 2 with a reception from 5:30 to 7:30 pm and a conversation with the Driskell scholar Julie McGee at 6:15, and runs through December 19 at Minnesota Street Project in the Dogpatch, where [Casemore](https://onview.so/sf/casemore-gallery/assemblage) and [Eleanor Harwood](https://onview.so/sf/eleanor-harwood-gallery/20-years-anniversary-exhibition) have shows worth seeing in the same building. ## 8. Richard Tuttle and Odili Donald Odita: *Language and Pattern* - Aug 17 – Oct 30, 2026 (on view) - At [Crown Point Press](https://onview.so/sf/crown-point-press.md), SoMa · 657 Howard Street - The show on On View: https://onview.so/sf/crown-point-press/language-and-pattern ![](https://images.onview.so/ef7ca63c539011fa.webp) Two abstract artists a generation apart, both published by Crown Point Press. Tuttle’s portfolio Type, from 2003, is a set of twenty-six small etchings that form an invented alphabet, with the printers’ tarlatan wiping cloth built into the prints. Odita’s 2022 prints, including Bliss and Net, set fields of colored aquatint behind syncopated soft-ground lines. Everything here was made in the press’s own studio, a few steps from the gallery, and the prints are priced far below either artist’s unique work. Through October 30, a short walk from SFMOMA. ## Also worth seeing - [Robert Adams: Contact](https://onview.so/sf/fraenkel/contact.md) at Fraenkel Gallery (coming up, Oct 29 – Dec 19, 2026): Finished prints beside the contact sheets they came from, shown for the first time; opens October 29 with a new monograph. - [Tangled Web: Weaving as a Conceptual Practice](https://onview.so/sf/hosfelt-gallery/tangled-web-weaving-as-a-conceptual-practice.md) at Hosfelt Gallery (coming up, Oct 17 – Nov 25, 2026): Nineteen artists, from a Lenore Tawney on loan from the Berkeley Art Museum and a Nazca textile fragment to new work; opens October 17 with shows by Andrea Higgins and Beto De Volder. - [Raymond Meeks: Assemblage](https://onview.so/sf/casemore-gallery/assemblage.md) at Casemore Gallery (on view, Sep 19 – Nov 14, 2026): Photographs of derelict workshops near Kingston, New York, hung with debris from the site, at Minnesota Street Project. - [Mayme Kratz: To Know the Dark](https://onview.so/sf/dolby-chadwick-gallery/to-know-the-dark.md) at Dolby Chadwick Gallery (on view, Oct 1 – 31, 2026): Resin panels embedding seedpods, bones and insects from the Arizona desert; the whole of October, on Post Street. - [James Hayward: Works 1975-2013](https://onview.so/sf/modernism-inc/works-1975-2013.md) at Modernism Inc. (on view, Sep 12 – Oct 31, 2026): The first posthumous survey of the Southern California monochrome painter, who died this year. - [Gamaliel Rodríguez: A fluorescent realm](https://onview.so/sf/rebecca-camacho-presents/a-fluorescent-realm.md) at Rebecca Camacho Presents (on view, Sep 3 – Oct 24, 2026): Paintings of Puerto Rico’s landscape and its failing power grid, picked out in gold leaf, in Jackson Square. - [Power of Mystery: 100 Years](https://onview.so/sf/robert-koch/power-of-mystery-100-years.md) at Robert Koch Gallery (on view, Sep 17 – Nov 28, 2026): A century of photographs that leave something unexplained, from Kertész and Sudek to Alex Webb, one floor above Fraenkel. - GaHee Park at Jessica Silverman: Opens October 28 with Chelsea Ryoko Wong upstairs; reception 5–7 pm. - Stephen Hannock at Berggruen Gallery: Opens October 29 with an artist talk at 4:30 pm and a reception after. ## Frequently asked questions ### Which San Francisco gallery shows close in October 2026? Hosfelt’s Stefan Kürten and Sarah M. Newton shows close on October 10. Berggruen’s Picasso-to-Calder survey closes on October 22. Fraenkel’s Lee Friedlander, both shows at Jessica Silverman, Wendi Norris’s Paalen and Rahon, and Rebecca Camacho’s Gamaliel Rodríguez all close on October 24. Liam Everett at Berggruen closes October 29, Tuttle and Odita at Crown Point Press October 30, and Mayme Kratz, James Hayward and Eleanor Harwood’s anniversary show on October 31. ### What opens at San Francisco galleries in late October 2026? Hosfelt opens three shows on October 17. Jessica Silverman opens GaHee Park and Chelsea Ryoko Wong on October 28, with a reception from 5 to 7 pm. On October 29 Fraenkel opens Robert Adams: Contact and Berggruen opens Stephen Hannock, with a talk at 4:30 and a reception from 5 to 7. Et al. in the Mission opens Nina Zurier and Jamie Emerick on October 16. ### What are the best museum shows in San Francisco in October 2026? At [SFMOMA](https://onview.so/sf/sfmoma), RM of BTS’s collection of Korean art, shown with the museum’s own, opens on October 3, and the Graciela Iturbide retrospective runs through November 29. The [Asian Art Museum](https://onview.so/sf/asian-art-museum) has the first North American museum show of the Korean abstract painter Ha Chong-Hyun, and [MoAD](https://onview.so/sf/moad) opened Dewey Crumpler’s first major museum survey on September 30. ### Can anyone go to a gallery opening in San Francisco? Yes. Opening receptions are free and public, usually on a Thursday or Saturday from about 5 to 7 pm, and often the artist is there. The dates of this month’s receptions are on each show’s page and under Events on [the list](https://onview.so/sf). Everything on view in the city, at every gallery and museum, is on [the list](https://onview.so/sf) and [the map](https://onview.so/sf/map), with the openings and talks coming up under Events. For the galleries themselves, read [the 8 best art galleries in San Francisco](https://onview.so/guides/best-art-galleries-san-francisco). The weekly email, under Resources, has each week’s openings and closings. --- Published Oct 2, 2026; the text was last revised on Oct 2, 2026. The addresses, hours and dates are from On View's listings for San Francisco as of Tuesday, October 13, 2026. This page: https://onview.so/guides/best-gallery-shows-san-francisco-october-2026. All the guides: https://onview.so/guides.md. Every gallery and museum in San Francisco: https://onview.so/sf.md. All of On View: https://onview.so/llms.txt