Public Talks

Wed., February 11, 2026, 7:30pm

The Priest, the Imperialist, and the Sculptor

Public Talk at 518 Valencia

Please join us in closing a year-long case study of the Padre Junipero Serra statue. Jonathan Cordero critically examines the romantic myth that supports the veneration of Serra and reveals the actual calamitous impact of the mission system. Chris Carlsson explains how an unlikely series of events led to the so-called “Mission Revival”, the commissioning of the statue by James Phelan, and giving Serra an undeserved new role in a manufactured public memory. He reveals that the statue's placement in Golden Gate Park in 1907 in fact bolstered a white supremacist agenda at the dawn of the 20th century. LisaRuth Elliott explores Douglas Tilden, the cosmopolitan sculptor revered in the deaf community, and his many other contributions to the SF civic art collection and beyond. This evening is a chance to talk about the reanimation of a man through a monument, the fraught relationship between a patron of the arts and his protegé, and how these honorific likenesses and what they are supposed to signify become part of our urban space.

Part of Shaping Legacy: San Francisco Monuments & Memorials, a project of San Francisco Arts Commission

We welcome donations. Donate now!

Wed., February 25, 7:30pm

Memory Keeping from Indigenous Perspectives

Public Talk at 518 Valencia

Shaping San Francisco’s year-long case study of the Padre Junípero Serra statue included a folklife-based, community-led research process centered on memory-keeping practices. Indigenous community researchers explored everyday practices from their own cultures that carry collective knowledge. The researchers included members of Urban Native communities, Indigenous migrants from Latin America and the Caribbean, and urban youth. Their research invites reflection on how genocide, relocation, and migration continue to erode Indigenous ways of knowing, and how communities continue to protect and hold on to them. The process was facilitated by storyteller Adriana Camarena. Several community researchers will share their findings. The discussion will be presented in Spanish and English.

Part of Shaping Legacy: San Francisco Monuments & Memorials, a project of San Francisco Arts Commission

We welcome donations. Donate now!

Wed., March 11, 7:30pm

City of Redwood

Public Talk at 518 Valencia

James Michael Buckley’s 2024 City of Wood: San Francisco and the Architecture of the Redwood Lumber Industry reconnects us to the built environment from San Francisco all the way up to Eureka in the far north of California, past and present. David Schmidt’s brand new majesterial San Francisco Bay Area: An Environmental History contains a close look at the historic forests of the Bay Area and how they were cut down to help build the region. Together these speakers will help us see how profoundly the iconic trees of the west coast literally undergird our everyday lives even today.

We welcome donations. Donate now!

Thursday, April 16, 7:30pm

San Francisco: A Liberal Oligarchy?

Public Talk at 518 Valencia

New tech oligarchs have thrown their money around to shape city politics for the past decade. We now have a billionaire bluejeans heir for mayor. We explore how organized money and corporate power managed to steer San Francisco going back through the post-WWII cold war, the long decline of Catholic morality, and the explosion of social movements and the sexual revolution the city is known for. Join historian Lincoln Mitchell, former supervisor and Mayoral candidate Tom Ammiano, and neighborhood activist and writer Romalyn Schmaltz for a spirited romp through the tangled and conflicted histories of the past few decades.

We welcome donations. Donate now!

Wed., May 27, 7:30pm

AI and Empire Building

Public Talk at 518 Valencia

We bring together several sharp critics of the hype machine that has long characterized the internet and our successive tech booms, currently blowing up in the AI bubble. Lost in the hand wringing over the more exaggerated claims of boosters and doomers is the ongoing reproduction of a colonial seizure of what should be our common wealth. This process has long historic roots and in some ways it is thanks to our amnesiac culture that the current crop of billionaire investors and tech bros have gotten away with doing it all again. Wendy Liu and others TBA.

We welcome donations. Donate now!