Nearly 1,000 mourners filled every seat in Grace Cathedral on Wednesday afternoon at the Requiem Eucharist for John Edward Buchanan Jr., the 58-year-old director of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco who died of cancer Dec. 30.Cathedral dean the Very Rev. Jane Shaw, who presided over the requiem, praised Buchanan’s “enthusiasm, leadership, risk-taking and advocacy of truth and beauty.” Read More

A new exhibit of works by sculptor Stephen De Staebler at the de Young Museum is running smoothly even as the staff mourns the death of John Buchanan, the director of the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco who died Dec. 30 at age 58. The main reason: Fine Arts Museums Board of Trustees President Dede Wilsey has taken charge. Wilsey, who had a close working relationship with Buchanan — “we were Barnum & Bailey,” she said Friday, the day the exhibit was  previewed for the press — was one of only a few who knew about the gravity of Buchanan’s illness. Read More

If it’s time to end the New Year’s resolution to diet, do it with panache. Behold and sample from the acres of edibles offered at the 37th annual Winter Fancy Food Show at San Francisco’s Moscone Center, running Sunday through Jan. 17. Read More

Acronyms for some organizations are easily identifiable. Most people know what IBM and KFC stand for — International Business Machines and Kentucky Fried Chicken. But “SECA”? Yet SFMOMA  — the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art — in some publicity material about two current exhibitions doesn’t mention that SECA means Society for the Encouragement of Contemporary Art. Is it a simple oversight, or is it symptomatic of insularity and of the assumption that everybody should know? Read More

He has Old World manners, exquisite and unaffected politeness, a brilliant mind and a wicked but benign sense of humor. The slight man with a beret is Donald Pippin. Still going strong at 86, he’s been an idol of Bay Area opera lovers for six eventful decades. Exactly 60 years ago, Pippin started bringing chamber music and opera to the hungry i and Opus One in North Beach, tickling the ivories at the original Spaghetti Factory. Read More

Director Zhang Yimou -- whose works range from the intimate “Happy Times” to the grand canvases of “Raise the Red Lantern,” “Hero” and the Beijing Olympics’ opening and closing ceremonies -- takes on the tragedy of Nanking in “The Flowers of War.” The tale of the Chinese city, whose occupation by Japanese forces in 1937 resulted in an estimated quarter million civilian casualties and 80,000 rapes, has been told in documentaries and feature films, but the epic scale of Zhang’s film is unprecedented. Read More

Marin Theatre Company’s brilliant presentation of Tennessee Williams’ “The Glass Menagerie” is a win-win for all. Audiences, whether new to the play or veteran fans of the 1944 work, should rejoice in director Jasson Minadakis’ “re-imagined” production. It’s often a tricky business putting on an acclaimed classic for today’s viewers. Productions typically fail when the director’s self-regard gets ahead of the work’s inherent value. Read More