Six years after announcing plans to deaccession its 1,600-work collection—the world's foremost trove of Post-war Northern California art—the di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art has reopened in a new downtown San Francisco space. The inaugural exhibition, "Far Out: Northern California Art," features artists such as Enrique Chagoya, Peter Saul, Viola Frey, Roy De Forest, and Jay DeFeo, celebrating the radical, countercultural ethos of the region. The space, located at the Minnesota Street Project in Dogpatch, had been vacant since the McEvoy Foundation for the Arts closed in 2023. Curator Twyla Ruby reports that visitors have been emotionally moved by seeing the collection reunited.
The di Rosa's rebirth matters because it preserves a unique and endangered legacy: the irreverent, often overlooked art of Northern California's postwar counterculture. Founder Rene di Rosa, an eccentric winemaker-turned-collector, built the collection alongside his wife Veronica, and their foundation turned a Napa vineyard into an art park. The new San Francisco venue not only saves this important regional collection from dispersal but also revitalizes a vacant gallery space, turning a potential loss for the Bay Area arts community into a triumphant return. It underscores the resilience of institutions that champion "incorrect" or unconventional art in an increasingly commercialized art world.