Among the placid homes of a residential neighbourhood just off Ca Highway 1 lurks one of San Francisco‘s most unexpected and curious gems. We are talking about the house museum of Gregangelo Herrera, one of the most representative artists of this city’s movements and art subcultures.
Imagine stepping through the gate of a house and taking a multi-sensory journey into a dreamlike universe where ancient Egypt, Mexico, Greek mythology, “Alice in Wonderland”, Exoticism, Surrealism, and “Arabian Nights” are all interconnected. It is a cultural cocktail capable of making you “drunk” but simultaneously extremely lucid and stimulated. This is the idea behind this extraordinary project carried out by Gregangelo and his company for several years, with great success and satisfaction.
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The house has a unique history, renamed Gregangelo Museum, for the surprising, immersive, and evocative experience of those visiting it.
In the 1980s, Gregangelo Herrera bought the house and, over about ten years, transformed it into a phantasmagorical artistic experience open to visits. The museum still remains the artist’s studio and private home. Still, it is also the Gregangelo & Velocity Circus/Arts & Entertainment headquarters, a point of reference for local artists, and a meeting place for cultural events and initiatives.
Almost thirty rooms, open to visitors with different tour formulas, result from over forty years of work by Gregangelo, his troupe of performers, and local artists.
They define it as a sort of introspective journey of the senses rather than a museum, where fantasy becomes a reality and past, present, and future mix, bypassing the perception of time and space.
The visit offered by the museum was conceived by Gregangelo, together with Marcelo Defreitas, creative director of Gregangelo & Velocity Circus/Arts & Entertainment. It is a deliberately ambiguous and eccentric experience, which many have compared to an LSD trip without LSD. But the founder is keen to point out that drugs have little to do with what inspires this place. It is a context where you can explore with your imagination, laugh, get excited, and learn new things through funny stories, riddles, and wild gardens surrounded by impressive mosaics and sculptures.
The rooms have been created from scratch as real multimedia installations with attention to every detail. Each of them has a theme. A room with very soft and luxurious things is called “the tickling room”. There is a bedroom for aliens, another inspired by the green lightning that appears at sunset, and one with a ceiling depicting galaxies. The sculpture of Pan, made up of about 15,000 twigs and branches, and the sparkling bathroom entirely covered with bright-colored stones certainly are noticed.
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If this place sounds familiar, it’s because the Gregangelo Museum has already became popular.
The most extravagant and magical house in San Francisco appeared in Home Strange Home and Offbeat America. It has also appeared in Netflix‘s Amazing Interiors and BBC‘s World’s Weirdest Homes. In addition, the Velocity Arts & Entertainment team is known for working with companies such as Lucasfilm, Warner Brothers, Microsoft e Mercedes-Benz.
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But enough spoilers for now! More details on the wonders of Gregangelo’s house can be found at www.gregangelomuseum.com
