Francesco Pedraglio (1981) uses storytelling as a tool for decoding intimate encounters with both mundane and historically complex situations. He explores how the
acts of narrating and staging shape the relationship between teller and listener,
revealing the fantasies and fictions that make up our reality. As part of his ongoing
Autobiography of a Museum series, Pedraglio composes a narrative from the perspective of the Wattis. Told through a set of staff keys—from office and storage keys
to the curator’s house key—Pedraglio scratches their silhouettes into the museum’s
walls, exposing layers of sheetrock and paint from previous exhibitions. A graffiti of
sorts, this quiet intervention leaves a speculative trace of those who move through the
institution: staff, artists, and the public. Here, buried memories, invisible routines,
and idle fictions accumulate in the museum’s unconscious.

Francesco Pedraglio: "Autobiography of a Museum" Performance

CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts is a nonprofit exhibition venue and research institute dedicated to contemporary art. It was founded in 1998, at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco.

The Wattis Institute is a place for showing art and for thinking about art. We spend time with artists and pay close attention to their ideas.

We like to work with one artist at a time—one artist presents an exhibition in the gallery, one artist stays in the apartment on a residency, and one artist is the subject of a year-long research initiative. 

The Wattis Institute is a headquarters for contemporary art for everyone in the Bay Area, and runs an active event space (featuring an artist-designed bar) for discussions, performances, screenings, artworks, and drinks.

+*.CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts was founded in 1998 at California College of the Arts in San Francisco. Initiated by Larry Rinder, it was originally called the CCAC Institute of Exhibitions and Public Programming. In 2002, it was renamed the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts. In 2013, it moved from CCA's main campus to its own building a few blocks away. Subsequently to Rinder's directorship, the Wattis has been led by Ralph Rugoff (2000 - 2006), Jens Hoffmann (2006 - 2012), and Anthony Huberman (2013 - 2023). Upon its founding in 1998, the Wattis also absorbed Capp Street Project, one of the earliest and longest-running artist-in-residence programs in the country, founded in 1983 by Ann Hatch. Building on that history, the Wattis Institute hosts a Capp Street Artist-in-Residence every year and invites an artist to come live and work in San Francisco for a semester, to teach a graduate seminar at CCA, and to present an exhibition or program. The residency changed its name in 2024, and is now known simply as the Wattis Artist-in-Residence. More about that here.The Wattis Institute has also collaborated with students and faculty members in other programs at CCA, including the Graduate Program in Curatorial Practice, the Graduate Program in Fine Arts, and the Graduate Program in Visual and Critical Studies, among others.

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