This free, open-air, pyrotechnic performance is in celebration of the artist’s exhibition Judy Chicago: A Retrospective, now on view at the de Young museum.

The performance will take place in front of the main entrance to the de Young museum (50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, San Francisco, CA 94118) and is subject to agreeable weather conditions. The most up-to-date information regarding the event will be posted the day of on the de Young museum’s social media channels (@deyoungmuseum).

For audiences unable to attend in person, a livestream will be offered on the de Young YouTube channel.

Forever de Young is made possible by by the generous support of Jordan D. Schnitzer in memory of his late mother, Arlene Schnitzer (1929-2020), who served on the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco Board of Trustees and Acquisitions Committee from 2006-2015.

Forever de Young harks back to the artist’s innovative Atmospheres, a series of performances staged in California in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Distinguished by their controlled choreography and distinct reformulation of land art, these live sculptures nonetheless escaped the annals of art history for decades.

In the early 2000s, a new generation of scholars surfaced and celebrated these works as feminist responses to the Light and Space movement. These unobtrusive and ephemeral environments—which opposed the permanent interventions into and transformation of landscape by her male peers—were finally understood as a form of sustainable earth art that freed color from the rigid structures of painting and sculpture and allowed it to gush into the air as clouds of pigment.

Please visit the de Young museum’s Getting to the de Young webpage for directions, parking, and public transportation information.

We ask that all attendees wear a mask and adhere to COVID-19 protocols as prescribed by the City and County of San Francisco. This event is subject to change or cancellation in accordance with city, county, and state health guidelines.

This performance is free and open to the public. Please note that the museum will close at 4 pm on October 16 in preparation for the performance.

Judy Chicago is a passionate advocate for the environment and animal rights, as explored in her retrospective. The materials employed in the performance are used in film, photography, and theatre productions, and contain non-toxic color pigments that will be released into the air temporarily and will then disappear. We are working closely with the City of San Francisco, San Francisco Fire Department, and San Francisco Recreation and Parks, following safety measures and best practices for the protection of our park and all attendees.