NEW YORK, NY.- When Monetta White was a co-owner of San Francisco restaurant 1300 on Fillmore a decade ago, she participated in the city’s restaurant week, promoting the local food scene. Now, as the executive director of the Museum of the African Diaspora downtown, she is organizing a celebration of Black visual culture, called “Nexus: SF/Bay Area Black Art Week,” to run Oct. 1 through Oct. 6.

“For me personally, as a native San Franciscan, the one thing I always look back on is the importance of the Black community in the city’s art, music and hospitality,” said White, who became the museum’s director in 2019 after a brief period on the board and who brings her marketing savvy to the job.

The week is “a way to create energy and celebrate the rich Black art landscape in the Bay Area,” she added, explaining that the initiative extends beyond San Francisco to recognize “Oakland’s long-standing influence as a center of Black arts and culture.”

“It’s more important than ever to build a unified Bay Area art scene,” she said, to counter what she calls the “doom and gloom” headlines that have plagued the region of late.

White said she had the idea of starting a local Black arts week, which is rare in the United States, after noticing how much was already happening around the time of the Museum of the African Diaspora’s fundraiser, the Afropolitan Ball, on Oct. 5. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, for example, has a Kara Walker commission, “Fortuna and the Immortality Garden (Machine),” on display. And in late September, the San Francisco Arts Commission will unveil Berkeley, California-based artist Lava Thomas’ long-awaited public sculpture of poet Maya Angelou. (The work had originally been rejected by city officials in what was widely seen as a political blunder.)

White is now reaching out to other museums, artists and their galleries to see if Nexus can highlight their activities or encourage them to organize events. She has already lined up a few artists to host open studios that week: In Oakland, there is Rashaad Newsome, an interdisciplinary artist who has used artificial intelligence technology in his futuristic performances and art making, and in San Francisco, Ramekon O’Arwisters, known for combining materials like jagged ceramic shards, fabric and zip ties into lush, spiky sculpture, will participate.

The Museum of the African Diaspora will also be opening a new show of contemporary art and design, “Liberatory Living: Protective Interiors & Radical Black Joy,” on Oct. 2.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.