The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) and San Francisco Beautiful (SFB) recently announced that 10 finalists were chosen to compete for the top five slots for Muni Art 2017, which promotes local artists by transforming Muni buses into rolling art galleries.
In this second year of the Muni Art program, the SFMTA is doubling the number of buses on which the art will be displayed from 50 to 100.
“We are extremely pleased that the Muni Art program has been so well-received,” said Ed Reiskin, SFMTA director of transportation. “These moving galleries will bring additional beauty to the public transit system, while supporting local artists.”
The public is invited to choose the final five lucky artists who will have their work displayed to over 700,000 daily Muni riders beginning this January 2017.
“We are so grateful that SFMTA has, not only agreed to host Muni Art 2017 but has doubled the number of rolling art gallery buses to 100!” said San Francisco Beautiful’s Executive Director, Darcy Brown. “The artists who applied this year are all very talented and I can’t wait to see which five will be chosen this year as our winners.”
The 10 finalists are:
- Marianne Bland
- Counterpoint Studio (Peter Tonningsen and Lisa Levine)
- DrawBridge: An Arts Program for Homeless Children
- Amos Goldbaum
- Ryan Hungerford
- Todd Kurnat
- Luis Pinto
- Lillian Shanahan
- Monica Tiulescu
- Jon Wessel
In addition to having their art displayed on 100 Muni buses, the artist who receives the most public votes will be awarded $2,000 and each of the remaining four will be awarded $1,250. The public may cast their votes by visiting the web site, www.neighborland.com/muniart/vote. The voting period ends August 29 at 6 p.m.
The contestants had between May 2 and June 17 to submit applications that reflected their artistic concept of “San Francisco Neighborhoods.” Of the over 60 applications received, ten were chosen by a jury comprised of seven members of the arts community which included a member of the San Francisco Arts Commission, a local art gallery owner, a working artist, community arts programmer and a curator at a public art cultural center. Decisions were based upon quality of concept, expression of theme, diversity and the likelihood that the artist will be able to deliver the completed eight panels of original work by the October 14 deadline.
