The exterior of the Wattis Institute with three people about to enter.

Wattis Institute labor research program featured on KQED

KQED KQED • October 30, 2025

KQED Arts writer Sarah Hotchkiss covers the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts' six-month research program Labor is on our mind, which examines San Francisco's labor history through bike tours, exhibitions, and public programming.

Top

The program features historian Chris Carlsson leading a free labor history bike tour on November 1, starting at Mission Dolores and ending at the Wattis Institute. Carlsson, director of Shaping San Francisco and co-founder of Critical Mass, guides participants through historically significant sites including Esprit Park (site of the 1974 Jung Sai garment workers strike) and Pier 70's shipyards.

The Wattis program spans six months, structured around the 19th-century workers' slogan: "8 hours of work, 8 hours of rest, 8 hours of what you will." Programming includes research exhibitions featuring materials from the San Francisco Labor Archives and California Labor School, reading groups, talks, and screenings. The first exhibition opens with a reception on November 7.

Hotchkiss writes that Carlsson encourages participants to contemplate their role in "producing this world instead of, potentially, a different world," exploring how labor movements and tactics from San Francisco's industrial past can inform present-day organizing.

A San Francisco History Tour You'll Feel in Your Quads

Related Stories

Adelita Husni-Bey, Prosthesis - Agricolture, 2017.

CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts presents Labor: 8 hours of work, 8 hours of rest, and 8 hours of what you will

The Wattis Institute launches a yearlong research series featuring exhibitions and public programs that explore the theme of labor, titled Labor: 8 hours of work, 8 hours of rest, and 8 hours of what you will.
Courtesy of the artist and Monique Meloche Gallery. Photo: Impart Photography

Maia Cruz Palileo’s Wattis Institute exhibition featured in the San Francisco Chronicle

“‘Maia Cruz Palileo: Long Kwento,’ invites visitors to explore alongside Palileo the question of what we remember and what we can’t—the paradoxical memory of remembering what we don’t remember,” says the Chronicle.
Cecilia Vicuña

Wattis Institute launches year-long research season dedicated to the work of Cecilia Vicuña

The Wattis will devote an entire year to reflecting on the questions posed by Vicuña’s work through intimate public and private reading groups and a series of public events.