Issues of identity, personae and gender mutability are among those raised in "Selves and Others," a provocative, artfully constructed show of 120 portraits from the 19th century onward, now at SFMOMA's Pritzker Center for Photography.

An award-winning, self-taught artist; a punch line; a canny social satirist and raconteur: The many facets of cartoonist Rube Goldberg, a man whose name is synonymous with wacky, chain-reaction contraptions, are explored in the Contemporary Jewish Museu.

Tangible forms of deities found in Buddhist and Hindu cultures constitute "Divine Bodies," an interesting if somewhat esoteric, narrowly focused new exhibition at the Asian Art Museum.

Two thoughtful gallery shows address female presence - and its absence - through different prisms.

Swedish figurative painter Pernilla Andersson and Brazilian photographer and screen printer Paula Pereira were working independently and had already claimed their respective aliases when they joined forces - and their pseudonyms - in 2009 to form t.w.five

As if being known as the most notorious libertine in history weren't enough, Giacomo Casanova was also a gambler, a social climber and a spy.

Californians believe that most of the great new ideas, innovations and trends are generated and nurtured in our free-thinking, unconventional state, then emanate outward to the rest of the world, which has to catch up.

BAMPFA's "Way Bay," a rangy, ambitious, historical survey of the Bay Area's legacy of art and cinema, mines the institution's eclectic holdings.

There may be no movie more closely identified with San Francisco than Alfred Hitchcock's "Vertigo," a labyrinthine tale of obsessive love and murder.

March comes in like a lion, so the saying goes, but the same could be said of January, judging from the crop of new exhibitions roaring out of the gate in this brand-New Year.

The country may have been taken over by philistines eager to cut funding for the NEA and other arts organizations they deem wasteful or nefarious, but at least for the Bay Area in 2018, there's reason for guarded optimism.

With 2018 just around the corner, it's time to pause and reflect on the year that was in art.

Local galleries are wrapping up 2017 with their final shows of the year. Here's a chance to catch some of them before time runs out.

Local galleries are wrapping up 2017 with their final shows of the year. Here's a chance to catch some of them before time runs out.