A new immersive art exhibition titled 'Black Gold: Stories Untold' opens at Fort Point in San Francisco, featuring 25 commissioned works by 17 artists that uncover the overlooked histories of Black Californians from the Gold Rush through Reconstruction. Curated by FOR-SITE, a nonprofit focused on art and place, the exhibition transforms the Civil War-era military fort into a multi-sensory space with beaded portraits, video installations, sculptures, and a tent installation by artist Umar Rashid. Works include Cheryl Derricotte's tribute to Mary Ellen Pleasant, a formerly enslaved woman who became a wealthy abolitionist.
The exhibition matters because it reclaims narratives long excluded from traditional historical accounts, using the symbolic setting of Fort Point—a fort that never saw combat—to challenge whose stories are preserved and valued. By highlighting figures like Mary Ellen Pleasant and Jim Beckwourth, the show connects contemporary conversations about race, memory, and value to the physical landscape of the Bay Area. It continues FOR-SITE's mission of site-specific art that interrogates history, following previous projects like 'Home Land Security' and 'Ai Weiwei on Alcatraz.'