Presented in partnership with The Great Highway gallery and Friends of Ocean Beach Park, HER(E) was installed in August 2024 and will be taken down at the end of February. The exhibition features eight mostly anonymous women from the OpenSFHistory archive that curator Nicole Meldahl “met” and couldn’t forget because they felt like family. Her emotional connection to these women rooted her within a feminine legacy in San Francisco and helped her feel at home here. By making them highly visible on large banners installed on street lamps along Great Highway, we had hoped someone would recognize them and give these women back their names. Although that didn’t come to pass, the exhibit has helped to temporarily correct a city-acknowledged gender imbalance in San Francisco’s public art.

We’re so grateful to have held space for these women on the highway for six months, and this event is our thank you to San Francisco. We hope you’ll join us to say bon voyage to the exhibition on Galentine’s Day. We’ll have soup shooters and sandwich bites available for attendees while supplies last, and the restaurant will be decked out with festive decorations. Additional food and drink can be purchased at the counter.

Special thanks to proprietor John Lindsey, who also designed and fabricated the banners, for letting us take over his restaurant! This event is free but registration is required. Rusty Ladle is a small Outer Sunset soup spot and space is limited.