KQED Arts & Culture
Your one-stop shop for the Bay Area’s cultural offerings, from KQED
💃 The Do List: Spice up your plans
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- Journalist and UC Berkeley graduate Catherine Price has collaborated with Jonathan Haidt for his new book.
- The Oscar-nominated animation is a dreamy sci-fi where environmental catastrophe and cartoony fun collide.
- Every year, the National Film Registry adds 25 films to its collection to be preserved for posterity.
- ‘1-800 Happy Birthday’ is a phone booth playing voicemails celebrating those whose lives were taken by police. The opening event for the installation takes place Sunday, Feb. 1, at the Black Panther Party Museum in Oakland.
- Punk bands, sword-swallowers and puppetry coexist at this new underground music venue.
- San Francisco’s executive director of arts and culture will head a new agency to “unify the work” of the San Francisco Arts Commission (SFAC), Grants for the Arts (GFTA) and the Film Commission (Film SF).
- The beloved Mission Cultural Center for the Latino Arts, a San Francisco nonprofit that has pulsed with Latino dance, theater, historic graphic arts and music for nearly five decades, collapsed under mounting financial distress.
- India-born, San Francisco-based painter Anoushka Mirchandani's first solo museum show, 'My Body Was A River Once,' is on view through April 26 at the Institute of Contemporary Art San José.
- Wrapped in the characteristic blue, red and white of the Dominican flag, the El Fogon d’Geny truck is repping the Dominican Republic in San José with its mofongo, pica pollo and assortment of hearty stews.
- The battle rapper’s video series-turned-mixtape serves as a lyricist lounge for the Bay Area, featuring collaborations with G-Eazy, Stunnaman02, Del the Funky Homosapien, Passwurdz, Ozer, Blimes and Gab, John Mackk and more.
- Just days before Super Bowl LX kicks off in Santa Clara, local advocates are teaming up with national healthcare researchers, counselors and former football players to host The Black Men’s Brain Health conference.
- The trailer for Boots Riley’s upcoming film ‘I Love Boosters’ just dropped — and it includes all the clever dialogue, exaggerated body suits and subversion of capitalism we’ve come to expect and love from the Oakland filmmaker.
- Just when the local scene could most use it, we’ve got some good news: The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has named the 16 finalists for the 2026 SECA Art Award.
- Here's everything you need to know about the 14 films nominated in six major categories.
- Nearly 280 filmmakers entered the annual contest celebrating creativity without copyright restrictions.
- San Francisco's Youth Poet Laureate program, relaunched last year by 826 Valencia, Youth Speaks, SFPL and the Mayor’s Office, has chosen its newest recipient: 17-year-old Karan Gupta. Aisha Rae McCulloch, also 17, has been named Vice Laureate.
- Album art for Wet Leg, Djo, Bad Bunny, Perfume Genius and Tyler, the Creator is nominated.
- Renée Fleming is the latest to say they will not perform at the Kennedy Center.
- There’s a church in the Bay Area that’s been worshiping the jazz legend's music for 60 years.
- Judd Apatow’s two-part HBO documentary explores the life, loves and losses of a comedy legend.
- A man who may or may not have killed his wife goes head-to-head with an AI judge in this futuristic dud.
- Jazz is dead, or so the perennial phrase goes, spoken by the jaded olds. And year after year, young artists prove them wrong.
- A film about faith and other leaps, Mona Fastvold’s remarkable ‘The Testament of Ann Lee’ does not ask us to endorse the tenets of the 18th-century Shaking Quakers. The film asks us to consider whether we are on the side of the creators or the destroyers.
- Lit up like a beacon on the corner of Telegraph and Woolsey in Berkeley, Smokehouse is a picture-postcard image of a classic American burger shack. When you're in the mood for a fast food–style char-grilled burger, this is the stop to satisfy your craving.
- Johnson, who was found suffering from stab wounds and blunt head trauma, was believed to have been living at the encampment. Some friends said he may have had CTE.
- ‘Super Hunger Anti-Valentine Bowl Games Part LX’ combines three themes its first iteration combined ten years ago: the Super Bowl returns to Levi’s Stadium, anti-Valentine season is back at Works, and a new Hunger Games film will hit theaters in November.
- Fresh off the success of her Oakland-set debut novel, ‘Shut Up, This is Serious,’ Bay Area author Carolina Ixta returns with a sophomore offering inspired in part by the inequities she saw in the region.
- Nominations for the 2026 Oscars are out, with ‘Sinners’ leading the pack with a record-breaking 16 nominations for an individual movie. See the full list:
- The San Francisco Center of the Book’s latest exhibit, ‘Who Is America at 250?’, takes a long, uneasy look at the issues plaguing the nation two and a half centuries after the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
- Yoshi’s is the oldest and most famous jazz club in Oakland. But lately, it’s been something else too: a home for hip-hop legends like Scarface, the Pharcyde and Ghostface Killah, usually with a live band. Mistah FAB takes the stage on Thursday, Jan. 22:
- The Sunset Night Market is back with a Lunar New Year–themed event on Feb. 27 — a nod to the neighborhood’s strong cultural identity as an informal Chinatown.
- There are no dragons, no maps and no internecine family trees in this ‘Game of Thrones’ prequel.
- The show presents the Academy as a starship that gets waylaid while traveling home to San Francisco.
- The NFL is marking the 60th anniversary of the Super Bowl with a hometown opening act. Green Day will kick off the big game with an opening ceremony Feb. 8 at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, the league announced Sunday.
- With a homemade costume and a cart full of water bottles and supplies, the anonymous Bay Area resident advocates for housing and compassion for his neighbors.
- An estimated two thousand Bay Area residents flocked to San Francisco on Sunday, Jan. 18 to celebrate the life of Claude, the California Academy of Sciences’ iconic albino alligator. See the photos:
- Oakland’s Chabot Space & Science Center is screening three cult classics in its immersive planetarium — including an unconventional idea for a Valentine’s Day date night.
- Gavin Newsom welcomed visitors back outdoors on Monday after President Donald Trump cut the holiday from a list of fee-free days at national parks.
- In November, CounterPulse laid off four of its five unionized administrative staff, including key roles in communications and fundraising, sending shockwaves through San Francisco’s community of performing artists.
- This Sunday, like so many other nights at the Mission District queer bar El Rio, the dance floor will fill up with partygoers getting down to a live set of Latin fusion beats. It will double as a fundraiser to support Bay Area families impacted by ICE.
- This year’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day marks the first year the federal holiday is not on the list of entrance fee-free days to national parks. Despite this regression, the Bay Area hosts a range of events this weekend to honor King’s enduring vision:
- This year's festival of betrayal and grit may stretch your conception of film noir at Oakland's Grand Lake Theatre.
- A 1956 police raid of a Pacifica bar, resulting in the arrest of many LGBTQ+ people, became a playbook for state repression for the next 15 years.
- Iggy Pop and Bikini Kill will headline this year's Mosswood Meltdown festival in Oakland, with Otoboke Beaver, the Dead Milkmen, Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein of Sleater-Kinney with Fred Armisen, Scowl, Frightwig, and the Dirtbombs also performing.
- This weekend, an intergenerational concert at Oakland’s Paramount Theatre will celebrate Sly Stone, who died in 2025 at 82 years old, as part of an annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration organized by the music education nonprofit Living Jazz.
- These are the tried-and-true titles that are sure to get the conversation going at your next book meeting.
- Turns out? Zombies plus Duran Duran equals supremely enjoyable horror.
- After the closures of the San Francisco Art Institute and Mills College, the announced end of Northern California’s last nonprofit art and design college, the California College of the Arts, hits triply hard.
- NPR's annual search for the next great undiscovered artist is open for entries now.
- This Thursday night’s home game against the Knicks will mark another milestone: the first time halal-keeping fans can chow down on Fikscue’s brisket sandwiches and sate ayam inside the arena itself for the Warriors’ fifth annual Muslim Heritage Night.
