By the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Bay Area art scene had become lively, and Bing was close to many of those artists. Her wider circle of friends, many of which were prominent Bay Area abstract painters, included Joan Brown, Wally Hedrick, Jay DeFeo, Bruce Conner and Fred Martin. Early career Following college, Bing became involved in the San Francisco Bay Area art scene. In 1960, while accompanying Joan Brown to New York for the latter’s one-person show at Staempfli Gallery, she met Marcel Duchamp, an extraordinary experience for her. In 1961, San Francisco’s Batman Gallery, an alternative Beat space with all black walls and located at 2222 Fillmore (named by poet Michael McClure and painter Bruce Conner), mounted her one-person exhibition Paintings & Drawings by Bernice Bing, which garnered praise from critics like Alfred Frankenstein from the San Francisco Chronicle. She also showed large-scale works, including her painting Las Meninas (1960) based on Diego Velázquez's Baroque court scene, also entitled Las Meninas (1656). James Monte critically reviewed her shows in Artforum in 1963 and 1964. She moved to Mayacamas Vineyards, Napa Valley in 1963 for a three-year period but returned to Berkeley for her two-person exhibition at Berkeley Gallery. In 1967, she took part in the first residential program of Esalen Institute, New Age Psychology and Philosophy at Big Sur, where she continued her interest in C.G. Jung’s symbolism, encountered Joseph Campbell and Alan Watts, and read Fritjof Capra’s 1975 book, Tao of Physics. From 1984 to 85, Bing traveled to Korea, Japan and China, studying traditional Chinese ink landscape painting at the Zhejiang Art Academy in Haungzhou. In addition to art, Bing was also an activist and arts administrator. She involved herself in many programs and organizations, like the National Endowment for the Arts Expansion program (1968), the Neighborhood Arts Program (1969–71), and the San Francisco Art Festival at the San Francisco Civic Center (early 1970s). In 1977, Bing created an art workshop with the Baby Wah Chings, a Chinatown gang, after the Golden Dragon Massacre in San Francisco. Bing also served as the first executive director of the South of Market Cultural Center (now known as SOMArts) from 1980 to 1984, expanding the programming during her time there. Her work in the community was recognized by awards in 1983 and 1984. Traveling to China Bing visited China from 1984 to 1985. There, she presented lectures on