Salesforce Tower Crown Lights Up for Holi in First-Ever Indian Festival Installation

For the first time in the crown’s history, Jim Campbell’s “Day for Night” LED installation atop Salesforce Tower was programmed March 4, 2026 to display a Holi-themed video, turning the building’s top six floors into a color-filled, animated spectacle that advocates say recognized San Francisco’s South Asian community on the city’s most visible public artwork. Organizers credited Seema Sri with driving the community request after a mayoral Diwali proclamation last fall.

Seema Sri, who posted about the event on Instagram, described the intent in the platform’s caption: “Holi is lighting up the crown of Salesforce Tower. The Festival of Colors, rooted in renewal, joy, and the triumph of light over darkness.” Sri told reporters she and followers pushed for more cultural representation after Mayor Daniel Lurie proclaimed Oct. 20, 2025 “Diwali day.” Sri said of seeing the test imagery, “We were so taken aback when we saw the colors,” and added, “We felt like school girls, seeing beautiful art come to life.”

The crown program is produced and programmed by Campbell Studios under Jim Campbell, the hardware engineer-turned-artist behind Day for Night. Campbell has described his planning-stage proposal as unique: “I presume I’m the only one who presented an image as my proposal.” Campbell’s approach uses low-resolution, pixelated moving imagery designed to read at extreme distance; the crown’s aesthetic intentionally uses blocky color to become legible across the city.

Salesforce Tower’s crown uses approximately 11,000 LEDs to softly light the exterior of the top six floors and is mounted on a tower that rises 1,070 feet; the installation’s low-resolution moving color imagery is designed for long-range visibility. The work has been described as visible from up to twenty miles away and even into the upper atmosphere, underscoring the symbolic reach of programming a South Asian festival on the West Coast’s tallest building by floor to roof. Salesforce holds the largest lease, occupying thirty floors, and Boston Properties is the primary owner-manager that works with Campbell Studios on crown programming and logistics.

Visually, the Holi installation featured animated, color-filled motifs that incorporated pixelated depictions of gulal and festival imagery. Organizers and observers noted specifically that the video included “digital hands tossing pixelated gulal,” translating the powder-throwing practice of Holi into the crown’s low-resolution palette so it registers at a distance and on the tower’s curved surfaces.

Campbell Studios’ selection policy for community displays guided the approval: the studio looks for requests that “represent a large community in the Bay Area” and does not charge organizers, while Boston Properties “works with the studio to absorb the cost.” The studio operates a cadence of public previews; “Every few weeks, the studio previews the test graphics directly on the tower. It helps artists tweak their final visuals,” said Strebel, who described the preview process that allowed Sri to see a test before the March 4 run.

The crown has a documented history since mid-2018 of rotating cultural and artist-driven displays, from Lunar New Year mainstays to one-off images like the Halloween “Eye of Sauron,” clapping hands for frontline workers, and swaying trees inspired by Golden Gate Park. Campbell has previously altered or retired imagery in response to public-safety and sensitivity concerns during the pandemic and wildfire seasons.

Several operational details remain to be confirmed: one supplied report contains the textual fragment “running after suns” in place of a confirmed schedule phrase, and a name discrepancy between “Strebel” and an artist listed elsewhere as Emma Estrebel should be reconciled. Follow-up verification is needed on nightly run times, whether the Holi imagery is cataloged as part of the Midnight Artist Series, and any formal cost breakdowns Boston Properties provided for this community display. The March 4 Holi crown marks a visible, citywide acknowledgment of a South Asian festival on one of San Francisco’s most prominent public canvases, and city arts managers and Campbell Studios can clarify scheduling and attribution in the coming days.