By Julie Zigoris : sfstandard – excerpt
Tom would have loved to have had Beaux Arts endowed with an historic status, like the one Gregangelo Herrera is applying for. His Gregangelo Museum has an excellent chance of being so ordained, given the wide-spread support he has. The blessing District Supervisor Melgar should ensure success as she Chairs the Supervisors Land Use and Transportation Committee. It is good to see that fun coming out in full regalia to celebrate what we are trying to preserve of our fair City by the Bay. I”ll have to go shoot some photos and looking the tea service soon.
Visit the Museum
Room 400 of San Francisco’s City Hall on March 20 had the makings of an SNL sketch. On one side, a band of 50 merry artists in bright dress, voicing heartfelt stories about their whimsical leader and his magical lair. On the other, scowling neighbors in nondescript clothes, rattling off complaints about traffic, trash and changing “neighborhood character.”
A profound chasm divided the two groups, even as the same source brought them into the room together: the 40-year-old Gregangelo Museum, which was being considered by the Historic Preservation Commission for an official city landmark designation.
The museum—a weird, whimsical, exploding-with-creativity art oasis hidden away in San Francisco’s leafy, suburb-quiet Balboa Terrace—is not any ordinary cultural hub. Its creator and owner is artist Gregangelo Herrera, a long-haired 58-year-old with the soul of a 9-year-old. A native San Franciscan, Herrera moved into the one-story Mediterranean Revival-style home in 1979 and has since set about transforming it into an immersive, through-the-looking-glass Shangri-La.
From the outside of Herrera’s museum, which he still uses as his full-time residence, there are hints that this is no ordinary house. A red- and white-striped carnivalesque gate adjoins the sidewalk, and an off-kilter grandfather clock leans on the front lawn…(more)
Beaux Artists 