Martin Strickland

Martin Strickland is the Associate Director of Public Life at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) in San Francisco where he develops the organizational focus on radical hospitality; participation rich public spaces; deep and generative relationships with community; and a culture of invitation. Making sure that people, aka ‘the public’, are at the center of everything we do at YBCA, Martin works to commit the model of the art institution as a public resource — to pledge the institution to artistic practitioners and constituencies who understand art and culture as forms of knowledge and experience that support civic inquiry.

He has curated multiple exhibitions and public programs, including co-curating YBCA’s signature triennial Bay Area Now 8 in 2018, and has collaborated with Lucía Sanromán on The City Initiative, a series of exhibitions and public programs featuring architects designers, planners and artists that focus on creating provocative works in the urban environment. Prior to YBCA, he worked as the programs assistant at the Arts Research Center, UC Berkeley, as an independent contractor with the San Francisco Arts Commission, and as a community organizer for public health in New Orleans. 

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) is one of the nation’s most innovative contemporary arts centers. Founded in 1993, YBCA’s mission is to generate culture that moves people.