The San Francisco Public Library's Main Branch features several exciting exhibitions showcasing San Francisco's art, culture and history. Highlights include:

Dear Sister Maya Angelou | 8 November 2024 - 16 February 2025

Celebrating Dr. Maya Angelou and San Francisco Public Library’s One City One Book, the sixth-floor exhibit shows Angelou’s longtime congregation membership with Tenderloin’s GLIDE Memorial Church. Dear Sister Maya Angelou draws from the San Francisco History Center’s recent archival acquisition, GLIDE Historical Records, to focus on Angelou’s involvement with GLIDE and her dedicated friendships with Reverend Cecil Williams and poet Janice Mirikitani. Materials on view include photographs, brochures, correspondence and newspaper clippings. In addition, the exhibit highlights Angelou’s enduring legacy and the impact she had on the church and city she loved. Learn more here. 

Malik Seneferu: A Retrospective | 16 January - 20 April 2025

Malik Seneferu has spent the last 35 years instructing and leading an array of artistic and cultural expressions throughout the Black diaspora in San Francisco and beyond. During this time, Seneferu has developed a multidisciplinary body of work stemming from his early, firsthand experiences dealing with prejudice and injustice, as witnessed in and around his community. In his continued pursuit to support underserved populations, he addresses these issues through his life and art, and has made a difference in the hearts and minds of many. 

A closer look at Seneferu’s artwork offers a broader story of his ability to overcome obstacles while fighting for social justice, as can be seen in several of his works including Brothas Untitled, Black Fist, Angela Davis, and Maya’s Revenge. At times described as reflecting the aesthetics of magical realism, Seneferu’s art embraces a commitment to the concept of beauty through his paintings, sculptures, assemblages, and digital reproductions.

Presented by the 31st annual AfroSolo Arts Festival, the exhibition showcases a diverse body of work that is divided into thematic sections: explosions in color; legacy series – honoring our elders, sculptural works; an assemblage series; and reproductions of original artworks. As a whole, Seneferu’s canon demonstrates a masterly exploration of socially conscious images and reflections of the artist’s life. Learn more here.

Margaret Kilgallen: Off The Wall | 10 January - 9 March 2025

In the late 1990s, while she worked in the Library’s Preservation Department, artist Margaret Kilgallen hand-lettered signs for the Technical Services work areas. Hung on the wall outside each office, a series of ten signs greeted library workers from 1999 until 2005 when the department moved to another building down the street from the Main Library. The original signs are now preserved in the Richard Harrison Collection of Calligraphy & Lettering, Book Arts & Special Collections, where they are publicly accessible to everyone interested in the work of this Mission School artist. Painted on reclaimed wood, using recycled red, black, and off-white paint, Margaret Kilgallen’s faux weathered signs were inspired by the vernacular shop signs of her Mission District neighborhood, and deep study of historic typographic and manuscript models in the Book Arts & Special Collections Center. Now for the first time, all ten of Margaret Kilgallen’s signs are on display. Learn more here. 

Life in San Francisco: Chinatown a Century Ago | 3 January - 6 March 2025

This exhibition features 50 postcards of San Francisco’s Chinatown produced between 1903 and 1915. Recording the everyday life of Chinese immigrants and the nostalgic scenes of the neighborhood, they bring the forgotten past to vivid life through cherished scenes which leave an indelible memory of Chinatown in the 20th century: Chinese children in colorful costumes; a fortune teller on the sidewalk; a cobbler in front of a shoe store; a peddler with livestock and Chinese vegetable; a clerk in front of a bazaar; traditional Chinese instruments in an association; Chinese pupils in a public-school classroom; an herbal doctor filling a prescription; a telephone operator station; a Chinese opera troupe; a funeral parade. In addition to postcards, there is a display inside the Center by American artist Esther Anna Hunt (1875-1957), who was awarded a gold medal at the Panama-California Exposition in 1915.