The 10 Best Museum and Gallery Shows to See in the Bay Area This Summer

The 10 Best Museum and Gallery Shows to See in the Bay Area This Summer

The summer is chock-full of well-deserved museum solos, exciting group shows and residency open houses.

beaded artwork of person with hands at head, densely covered in shells and tassels
Demetri Broxton, ‘Still Waters Run Deep,’ 2025; Japanese & Czech glass beads, sequins, cowrie shells, quartz, pressed glass, wooden beads, brass, silver, rayon chainette, wool, serigraph printed on Japanese sateen cotton, mounted on birch board, 40 x 25 x 1 inches. (Courtesy of the artist and MoAD)
Demetri Broxton, ‘Ancestral Echoes — Crops of Empire’

 

June 10–Aug. 16, 2026
Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco

For a decade, MoAD’s Emerging Artist Program has introduced audiences to Bay Area artists on the cusp of wider recognition. Selected artists get a three-month show at the museum; audiences get to say “we saw them back when.” Next on the schedule (after Jasmine Ross’ photo show Beauty Plus) is Demetri Broxton, a mixed media artist who is also somehow the executive director of the arts nonprofit Root Division.

In group presentations over the past few years, Broxton’s work has stood out for its density and tactility. With Ancestral Echoes, he adorns archival photographs, printed on fabric, with sequins, beads, shells and tassels. Loosed from history, black-and-white images become ritual objects that shimmer and sparkle, full of the potential for liveliness — or at least sound and movement — once again.