Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
Monday | Closed
Tuesday | Closed
Wednesday | 11:00 AM - 8:00 PM
Thursday | 11:00 AM - 5:00 PM
Friday | 11:00 AM - 5:00 PM
Saturday | 11:00 AM - 5:00 PM
Sunday | 11:00 AM - 5:00 PM
Special events:
Wednesday, June 3 | 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM
Dreams, OMENS, and Language
Dreams, OMENS, and Language: Writers respond to The Prince of Homburg
Small Press Traffic and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts present an evening of poetic texts in dialogue with the dream-like video installation The Prince of Homburg: A Solo Exhibition by P. Staff.
Four Bay Area writers—Marcel Pardo Ariza, Snowflake Arizmendi-Calvert, Mara Hassan, and willow wilderness hour—respond to the exhibition through newly commissioned texts which move between reflection, resistance, and reimagination.
The program celebrates the launch of Small Press Traffic’s “The Back Room” summer folio, OMENS, featuring all four writers.
The audience is invited to view the immersive film installation before or after the program. Entrance to the gallery is free.
Learn more and RSVP here.
Thursday, June 4 | 7:00 PM
Drag For Your LIFE!
Drag For Your LIFE! is a celebration of drag as art, resistance, and radical imagination.
Hosted by the incomparable Tina Valentin Aguirre, co-curator of Conjuring Power: Roots & Futures of Queer & Trans Movements, the evening conjures a spectacular lineup of artists: Donna Persona, Kenya Pfister, Leigh Crow, Madd Dogg 20/20, Miss Shugana, Mx. Kiki Krunch, Per Sia, and Raya Light, each bringing their own unapologetic self-expression to the spotlight.
Through glamour, humor, protest, and transformation, these performers embody the living legacy of queer and trans performance—honoring the past while dazzling us toward new futures.
Prepare for a night where art, activism, and fabulousness collide.
Learn more and RSVP here.
Saturday, June 6 | 1:00 PM
Death Drive
Totally Fucked Up x We’re All Going to the World’s Fair: Teen Death Drive
Gay or not, we can all agree: being a teenager SUX. As a weirdo, finding your footing in a world that privileges squares can feel insurmountable. Both Gregg Araki’s Totally Fucked Up (1993) and Jane Schoenbrun’s We’re All Going to the World’s Fair (2021) allow us to experience the mindf***k that is queer teenagedom.
Totally Fucked Up is a series of teen confessionals that stitch together a tapestry of the lives of queer teens in the ‘90s, while We’re All Going to the World’s Fair depicts the nightmare that is becoming during the digital age. Stinky, sexually frustrated, and suicidal, these teens must reckon with their place in the world.
Learn more and purchase tickets here.
Saturday, July 11 | 7:30 PM Esto No Tiene Nombre, performance
Sunday, July 12 | 2:00 PM Esto No Tiene Nombre, performance
Friday, July 17 | 7:30 PM Esto No Tiene Nombre, performance
Saturday, July 18 | 2:00 PM and 7:30 PM Esto No Tiene Nombre, performance
Sunday, July 19 | 2:00 PM Esto No Tiene Nombre, performance
In the one woman show Esto No Tiene Nombre, acclaimed poet Denice Frohman brings the oral histories of Latina lesbian elders to life—placing herself and the audience inside their stories, to discover her own desires around family, belonging, and the future.
The show draws upon interviews gathered for I See My Light Shining: Oral Histories of Our Elders, including recollections of first kisses, pre-Stonewall police raids, clandestine community gatherings, and histories erased. Through monologue, poetry, audio interviews, and visual projections, Frohman inhabits these stories as a way to break free from what she’s been carrying, and to find her own path forward.
Powerful yet tender, Esto No Tiene Nombre is a vibrant portrait of Latina lesbian lives, families, communities, and ultimately, of Frohman herself. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts is proud to present the official premiere of Esto No Tiene Nombre from July 11–19, 2026.
The show’s title is inspired by Esto No Tiene Nombre, the first Latina lesbian magazine, founded in the 1990s by Colombian poet and activist tatiana de la tierra.
Esto No Tiene Nombre was created and developed with support from Baldwin for the Arts, Emerson Collective, Journey Arts, the Philadelphia Foundation, and The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural and Educational Center’s Historias Initiative.
Learn more and purchase tickets here.
The Prince of Homburg: A Solo Exhibition by P. Staff | January 17 - June 14, 2026
On view for the first time in the United States, The Prince of Homburg explores freedom, repression, desire, and the queer body through prints, sculpture, and a dream-like video installation.
Loosely inspired by Heinrich von Kleist’s 1810 play of the same name, the work explores exhaustion as a response to structural oppression. The centerpiece of the installation is a 23-minute video, which alternates between nighttime scenes of a sleepwalking protagonist in a dystopic landscape, and daytime clips of scholars, activists, and artists reflecting on contemporary queer and trans identity.
The video is projected within an intimate, cabaret-style gallery, with visitors seated at café tables. The immersive installation also includes photograms and a security fence sculpture with impaled objects, both featuring items related to the video.
Originally commissioned by Dundee Contemporary Arts in Scotland and the Irish Museum of Modern Art, YBCA is proud to present The Prince of Homburg at a moment when questions of identity, autonomy, and social control feel especially urgent.
Curated by Jeanne Gerrity.
Conjuring Power: Roots & Futures of Queer & Trans Movements | March 13–August 23, 2026
Presented by YBCA in collaboration with the GLBT Historical Society
Conjuring Power is a multimedia exhibition exploring the resilient beauty, cultural richness, and fierce resistance of Bay Area queer and trans communities.
Broadly organized as a journey through time, this multimedia exhibition explores how queer and trans communities harness creativity to build culture, sustain one another, and strengthen movements across generations. Across epic murals, rarely-seen documentary photography from the 1970s and 80s, and queer-futurist contemporary video work, Conjuring Power is a potent blend of art, archive, and imagination.
The exhibition will include work by Ester Hernández, Serge Gay, Jr., Tanya Wischerath, and Crystal Mason, and emerging artists from the Queer Ancestors Project, as well as archival material from the GLBT Historical Society and audio clips from Caro De Robertis’ oral histories with the groundbreaking Elders Project. Accompanying public programs such as panel discussions, gallery talks, and live performances will be announced in early 2026.
An alchemy of legacy and imagination, joy and defiance, Conjuring Power is a timely exhibition that will inspire, provoke, and revitalize communities across the Bay Area.
Diedrick Brackens: gather tender night | March 13 - August 23, 2026
Diedrick Brackens: gather tender night is the artist’s first solo exhibition in the Bay Area, featuring fifteen weavings created since 2020, that consider tenderness, migration, and connections with the natural world.
Executed on the loom in hand-dyed, cotton fiber and acrylic yarn, Brackens’s works convey a masterful and meditative process of physical discovery and storytelling. For the artist, the outdoors is an important space for queer folks to be themselves and participate in spaces of desire and sensuality freely. Throughout the exhibition, single and paired figures exist in resplendent depictions of water, flora, and fauna, launching the viewer’s imagination.
Organized by guest curator Eungie Joo, the exhibition includes three new works that explore Brackens recent impulse to arrive home—to bring things inside to rest and ruminate, inhabit space, and be cared for.