About The Headlands Center for the Arts

Headlands Center for the Arts is located in the Marin Headlands—2100 windswept acres of hills, cliffs, coves, and beaches just north of San Francisco—in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

Headlands’ location, just 15 minutes outside of San Francisco, provides participating artists easy access to the Bay Area’s vibrant arts community and affords artists and visitors alike the unique opportunity to be immersed in a vast and inspiring natural environment—a place where time, scale, and perspective are all relative.

When Headlands Center for the Arts took up residence at historic Fort Barry in 1984, part of their mandate was to rehabilitate and steward the historic structures that would comprise their campus. Artist studios, offices, and public spaces are located in two four-story former army barracks: voluminous structures with big windows; tin ceilings; oak balustrades; maple floors; and yard after yard of history, character, and possibility.

Their ongoing commissions initiative invites visionary artists to reimagine the spaces as art projects, giving them new meaning while honoring their original designs and architectural integrity. As much archaeological site as it is artistic endeavor, each project gives artists and visitors an opportunity to experience a work of art from the inside out.