Last week, SF Weekly visited all the de Young Museum paintings on loan to public officials that it could — until Supervisor Eric Mar's staff gave us the boot.
A longer, less certain, and far less satisfying art tour would be chasing down the San Francisco Arts Commission's 754 works on loan to 183 city agencies and offices. That'd be a lot of art even if you knew where it all is.
The Arts Commission does not.
Absent that vital knowledge, its "Loan Program" has been on hold for several years; a "comprehensive inventory" of its roster was initiated in January 2013. In short, the Arts Commission has been reticent to lend out any more art until it's certain it knows exactly where the art it already has loaned out is located (or not located). "The inventory will inform us if there are works that are unaccounted for," sums up commission spokeswoman Kate Patterson-Murphy.
And yet, even if they did know, they wouldn't let on: "For security reasons, we don't make a practice of sharing the exact locations of the two-dimensional artworks," says Patterson-Murphy.
The inventory is expected to conclude in July. At that point, perhaps, the Arts Commission can decline to share the location of the paintings it can't find.
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