500 Capp Street, The David Ireland House

Kenneth David Ireland (1930–2009)

500 Capp Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

415-872-9240

ABOUT

The 500 Capp Street Foundation honors David Ireland’s legacy by providing visitors the opportunity to experience The David Ireland House and immerse themselves in a 360-degree portrait of one of the West Coast’s most important practitioners of conceptual and installation art.

In the spirit of Ireland—who actively curated the house and frequently opened it to visitors—The Foundation conducts artist-led public tours, presents a dynamic program of exhibitions and public events, maintains a permanent archive of the artist’s extant body of work, and hosts visiting artists from around the world.

SPECIAL RESOURCES

“And if you spend some time with the house it will glow for you in the warmth of the afternoon sun.”

— David Ireland

David Ireland (1930–2009)

American artist David Ireland is admired internationally for a diverse body of work concerned with the beauty inherent in everyday things and the making of art as a part of daily life. His idiosyncratic, hybrid practice blends sculpture, architecture, painting, and performance, and often draws on ordinary materials such as dirt, concrete, wood, or wire that he collected over time.

Ireland boldly began his full-time art career late in life after taking a circuitous route to his calling. In the two decades between his completion of a Bachelor of Applied Art degree from California College of the Arts (now California College of the Arts) in 1953 and finishing his graduate work at the San Francisco Art Institute in 1974, he followed a winding path through military service, marriage, fatherhood, insurance sales, carpentry, and extensive world travels in Asia and East Africa as a safari guide and importer of artifacts.

_{David Ireland, Untitled (Cabinet), 1989-2006; Collection of The 500 Capp Street Foundation; Photo: Henrik Kam, courtesy of The 500 Capp Street Foundation.}

_{Katharina Grosse, Untitled, 2017. Acrylic on aluminum, 29 x 35 x 56 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Gagosian Gallery. Image courtesy of The 500 Capp Street Foundation. Photo: Preston/Kalogiros.}

LEARN MORE

“You can’t make art by making art” has become one of Ireland’s best-known sayings and it’s often used to summarize the philosophy that guided his Zen-like, interdisciplinary practice.

As a teacher and mentor, Ireland actively curated his 500 Capp Street home and opened it to visitors from across the globe, including visual artists, writers, musicians, performers, and scholars. In that spirit, the Foundation presents three curated exhibitions per year in direct response to the house, its contents, and permanent collection of Ireland works.

Ireland’s best-known work is his house at 500 Capp Street in San Francisco, which served simultaneously as his environmental artwork, social sculpture, and residence for 30 years. It embodies his visual language and exists as both a container for his art and an artwork in its own right.

In 1975, after a yearlong post-graduation sojourn in New York, Ireland returned to San Francisco where he quickly became an integral member of the Bay Area Conceptualist movement —which included living and late peers such as Terry Fox, Howard Fried, Paul Kos, Tony Labat, Tom Marioni, Bonnie Sherk, and Jim Melchert—and helped establish San Francisco as an important center for conceptual art activity, then flourishing throughout the US and globally.

IN COLLABORATION WITH THE NATIONAL TRUST