Customer Spotlight: An Interview with Max Khusid Gallery Owner of Art House SF
This post is part of our ongoing series highlighting the work, expertise, and creative practices of Metropolitan Picture Framing customers.
Art House SF, founded by Max Khusid in 2019, evolved from an online gallery to a San Francisco arts hub with a permanent Market Street location, international art fair presence, and community-driven public art initiatives
Art House SF also leads two public art projects in San Francisco, Art on Innes and the Castro Art Walk.
Why did you decide to start using Metropolitan Picture Framing?
A friend of mine, a professional museum curator, recommended Metropolitan Picture Framing. Most custom frame shops don’t have the same quality as Metropolitan. I wanted to have frames done from real wood, real texture, real grain and made by real people. Too many custom frame shops use pre-fabricated finished moulding that looks plastic and cheap.
I sell high-quality art and I think the frame must match it. That’s very important to me. I work with my artists for years, I know them personally, I find them in unique places. I know the effort that Tashi Gurung from the remote village in Nepal puts in his thangkas. I know the effort that Lobsang Durney from Valparaiso, Chile puts in his surrealist paintings. I know how Hajime Namiki from Tokyo, Japan obsesses over the quality of his Japanese woodblock prints.
I’d like to match that effort with hand-made, high-quality, well-crafted frames. Framing is art as well. And in my experience, a good frame would make an average artwork look good, but an average frame would make a good artwork look average.
The options from Metropolitan allow me to design the right frame for each artist.
Editors Note: Art Frame SF uses both exhibition frames for Works on paper and floater frames for paintings.
When ordering frames for exhibitions at the gallery do you order online or by the phone?
I prefer online. It takes me a couple of days to take all measurements for each art piece. I carefully add each frame to the shopping cart on your website, and then submit them as a batch. Your website is very helpful and I love how it guides me in frame design. I like your websites simplicity and it how streamlined everything is.
Have you found our framing advice section useful? If so what specifically have you used it for?
I watched a number of videos of how to hinge artwork and do the final fitting of the artwork package since that’s what I have to do often. I think I probably watched every single video. They’re straightforward and to the point.