Exhibition text by Alberto Cuadros:

My first visit to Tom Marioni’s Wednesday meetings was in 2010. The invitation came from Alissa Anderson—almost as an afterthought. She said to me, “Hey, you might like this place,” snapping on her helmet as she left the surf shop where I was working. “I’m bartending this thing. You should come.” That was it—she sped off on her moped to some other part of the Outer Avenues.

Alissa recently told me about her first visits to Tom’s in 2001. She said that Lawrence Ferlinghetti was the guest bartender the first time she went and she quickly put it together: something quietly significant seemed to be afoot at Tom’s Wednesday studio–and it definitely had nothing to do with the beer selection. Then, on that Wednesday in 2010, I found myself at Tom’s studio. I walked in and plopped down on a bar stool, right in between Paule Anglim and Robert Bechtle. Right on cue, Robert Bechtle—or Bob, as he was referred to at Tom’s—ordered his famous half–non-alcoholic O’Doul’s–half–Anchor Steam beer. Simultaneously, someone in one of the booths—probably Dan Max—started up a conversation about Cage, or it may have been Duchamp or maybe even Beuys. This was a while ago now, however I do remember with absolute clarity the feeling that I had stumbled into something singular, and that I needed to be part of it.

I always say that Tom’s Wednesday group was my first formal education in art—and it really was. I pretty much learned everything there first, and 15 years later, I’d have the honor of receiving my own SIA “GB” degree, cementing my place in the group as its newest member.

The SIA is a division of Tom Marioni’s Museum of Conceptual Art (MOCA), where, in 1970, the Wednesday group began an ongoing artwork: The Act of Drinking Beer with Friends Is the Highest Form of Art. The group has gone through a few iterations, occupying a number of different venues—bars, galleries, and studios have all been home to the group over the past 55 years. It has had a few name changes, a dedicated core of regulars, and then some who would hang out for a while, disappear, and resurface years later as if only a week had gone by. Mike Dyar, for instance, decided to take all of the 1980s off to play beach volleyball.

The group’s historic continuum contains, within itself, a whole lot of history: art history, jazz history, American history, world history—sometimes very niche history—a healthy dose of art world gossip, past and present. But crucially, it also contains the highest form of art, which, as we know, is the act of drinking beer with friends. What makes this such high art is largely due to the high quality of these friends. Between Tom’s social sculptures and Kathan Brown’s Crown Point Press—which attracted world-class artists from around the world—they were truly one of the great power couples in art history and a gift to San Francisco, being in close proximity to the SF Museum of Modern Art didn’t hurt either. This exhibition recognizes a legacy that is still unfolding both through the works on display and by sustaining the culture that shaped them.