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Kick-Off Muni Art 2020

Monday, January 13, 2020

On Thursday, January 9, at City Hall, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) and San Francisco Beautiful (SFB), announced the kick-off of the 2020 Muni Art Project.

Now in its fifth year, Muni Art is the only public art project that exclusively features San Francisco artists and poets. The program brings together the artists’ original work along with five poems under a theme.  The poems were selected by the Poetry Society of America and will be presented on 100 Muni buses throughout San Francisco from January through April 2020. Over 750,000 Muni riders will experience Muni Art 2020.

“Muni is the one place in the City where everyone comes together, so our buses are also the best possible art gallery,” said SFMTA Director of Transportation, Jeffrey Tumlin. “Art elevates people and changes their perspective. Transit connects people. Art and transit are perfect partners.”

The 2020 theme, “Hidden Gems of San Francisco” is a collaboration with The Poetry Society of America (sponsors of Poetry in Motion ®).  The non-profit organization was involved in the selection of the five poems from local poets which in turn were creatively interpreted by each Muni artist resulting in key artwork pieces from each artist for public display.

The 2020 Muni artists are:

Colorful geometric shapes
Wendy Ackrell

Stylized images of San Francisco with the word "Nourishment" overlaid
Shannon Bodrogi

Watercolor of T Third Muni Metro Light Rail Vehicle approaching under a cresent moon
Vanessa Fajardo

Collage of various San Francisco themes including the Transamerica Pyramid
Skooter Fein

Image of Jocelyn Li Langrand's illustration of people and a giraffe riding bikes up a hill with "San Francisco" written upon it
Jocelyn Li Langrand

The five 2020 Muni poets and poems are:

Iris Jamahl Dunkle “Listening to the Caryatids on the Palace of Fine Arts”

Randall Mann “The Long View”

Melissa Stein “Baker Beach”

Tess Taylor “Train Through Colma”

Mathew Zapruder “The Antidote to Fascism is Poetry”

About the program

In addition to the poet panels, each artist also has three panels to freely use for reflecting the program theme for a total of eight original works that will line both interiors and sides of the buses.

This year, the Muni Art Project is funded by members of San Francisco Beautiful, AT&T and UpCal Entertainment.

For more details on the winners of the Muni Art Project, please visit the San Francisco Beautiful webpage. Examples of each artists’ work can be found at SFMTA Muni Art and from the links above to each artist page.