Alberta Mayo was assistant to SFMOMA director Henry Hopkins in the mid-1970s. She started the Manitoba Museum of Finds Art in 1975, hosting solo and group exhibitions out of her own administrative space within the museum through 1978.

In a 1977 interview with Mayo in the San Francisco Examiner, Jon Carroll explained: “So we have this secret and subversively good-natured museum tucked away inside this larger and appropriately grimmer museum. We have a way for artists who have not yet hit the big time to hit the eyes of Henry Hopkins, who is definitely the big time. Every time Henry leaves his office, there is outlaw art under his very nose.”

Read more about it in this 2011 interview on SFMOMA’s ‘Open Spaces’ blog.