About Southern Exposure
Southern Exposure (SoEx) is a nonprofit visual arts organization that supports emerging artists and youth in a dynamic environment in which they can develop and present new work and ideas. An active presence in the Bay Area for 37 years, the organization evolves in response to the needs of artists and the community, engaging the public in the artists’ work. SoEx reaches out to diverse audiences and serves as a forum and resource center to provide extraordinary support to the Bay Area's arts and education communities. Activities range from arts education programs, exhibitions of local, regional, and international visual artists’ work, public art projects, grants, and lectures, workshops, panel discussions, and performances. SoEx is dedicated to giving artists and youth—whether they are teaching, exhibiting, curating, or learning—an opportunity to realize ideas for projects that may not otherwise find support.
Program Overview
*Exhibitions Program: Featuring solo, thematic, and juried exhibitions, SoEx offers emerging artists the opportunity to work in formats and contexts that extend and challenge their artistic development and exposure to new audiences. SoEx commissions new work by exhibiting artists and supports them in the development and presentation of their work. Known for their consistent high quality, SoEx’s exhibitions are pivotal in many artists’ careers. SoEx’s exhibitions are developed by an artist-run Curatorial Committee made up of a rotating group of ten artists and staff.
*SoEx Off-Site / Public Art: SoEx’s public art programs seek to commission and present new work by that intervenes and interacts in the social and political spheres beyond the space of gallery. SoEx supports and encourages these practices as few venues support emerging artists working in the public. The recently completed, acclaimed yearlong series, SoEx Offsite, commissioned eight public art projects and related programs investigating artists’ strategies for exploring and mapping public space around the Bay Area.
*Artists in Education Program (AIE): SoEx’s nationally recognized Artists in Education (AIE) program brings together diverse youth, artists, schools and community organizations in a dynamic series of innovative programs. AIE offers youth opportunities to learn critical, artistic, vocational, and cultural experiences beyond the traditional school environment. It also offers professional teaching opportunities for local emerging artists to become arts educators, extending their practice into the community. Each year SoEx employs 20 teaching artists and works with 150, 14 to 21 year olds through year-round after-school and summer programs.
*Public Programs and Events: Lectures, performances, artists' talks, screenings, educational programs, panels and symposia create a forum on contemporary aesthetic, sociopolitical and cultural issues. Through their inter-disciplinary nature, SoEx events bring topical issues to a broader audience.
*Grants to Artists/Alternative Exposure Grant Program: In 2007, SoEx launched the Alternative Exposure Grant Program, a major new initiative that offers more than $60,000 in grants annually to local artists and groups working in the visual arts. From 2007-11 SoEx has granted nearly $300,000 to 90 local projects through this new program supported and created in partnership with the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and with additional support from Grants for the Arts/SF Hotel Tax Fund. SoEx will run the 6th round of this program in 2012 and will distribute $66,000 to 19 new projects this year.
*Publications: Southern Exposure Publications provide the public with access programs, stimulates dialogue and engagement with artwork, and encourages critical writing about the arts.
