SFMOMA | About Us | Press Room | Advance Exhibition Schedule

Rooftop Garden

May 10, 2009 - May 05, 2013
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Through June 2, 2013
SFMOMA's long-awaited space for large-scale sculpture features a combination of well-known, rarely seen, and recently acquired works from the museum's collection. Sculptures spanning the last five decades by artists such as Robert Arneson, Louise Bourgeois, Alexander Calder, Tony Cragg, and Ellsworth Kelly are featured in the Rooftop Garden, in both open-air and enclosed spaces. In addition, a site-specific installation by former SECA Art Award recipient Rosana Castrillo Díaz animates the glass-walled bridge that leads visitors from the interior fifth-floor galleries out onto the rooftop.

Press release | Press images

Selected Histories: 20th-Century Art from the SFMOMA Collection: February 25, 2011 - June 02, 2013

Through June 2, 2013
This installation of works from SFMOMA's collection is conceived as a series of chapters that illuminate key moments and themes in 20th-century art. Each gallery examines a particular subject, such as still lifes and interiors; movement, such as Surrealism; or geographic region, such as Latin America. By presenting a range of conversations among varied works, the exhibition explores the many narratives the museum's collection can suggest about the history of modern art.

Picturing Modernity: February 26, 2011 - June 02, 2013
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Through June 2, 2013
This changing selection of pictures from SFMOMA's world-renowned photography collection includes photographs from the mid-1800s to the present that capture key moments in the development of the medium.

Ben Kinmont: Prospectus

September 01, 2012 - May 12, 2013
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Existing somewhere between conceptual art and "social sculpture," Ben Kinmont's artwork takes the form of gesture, conversation, and promise, as well as the things that support and document such acts: contracts, transcripts, prints, shared meals. This exhibition in the Koret Visitor Education Center presents ephemeral and archival material related to three of Kinmont's projects—the interview-based Moveable Type No Documenta and On Becoming Something Else, as well the exhibition Promised Relations; or, thoughts on a few artists' contracts—that weigh the boundaries between art and the practice of everyday life.

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New Work: Alessandro Pessoli

September 28, 2012 - February 18, 2013
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Alessandro Pessoli (b. 1963) creates drawings, paintings, and sculptures that depict expressive, typically melancholic, figures placed within fragmented narratives. A recurring cast of characters and symbols—such as musicians, a candle with a flame, a guitar, a phallus, or a cross—drive these elusive scenes. Formed through a process of layering and erasure, Pessoli's work is realized without sketches or models. The resulting compositions have a dreamlike atmosphere and a pervasive sense of memory due to the ghostlike traces that are left from previous states. Deeply reverent of art history, his work often pays homage to and quotes the formal characteristics of his predecessors—such as the mystical symbolism of Odilon Redon; the diverse formal language and focused character studies of Pablo Picasso; the expressionistic searching and isolation of Edvard Munch; and the biting caricatures of Honoré Daumier. For his New Work exhibition, Pessoli will pair new drawings and ceramics with recent works that have only been shown in Europe. This will be his first solo museum presentation on the West Coast and his first exhibition in San Francisco.

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Paul Klee's Circus: October 13, 2012 - March 05, 2013

The great Paul Klee (1879–1940) had a passion for performance. His engagement with this subject ran from the depiction of opera singers to the production of functional hand puppets. This focused exhibition presents a selection of prints and drawings by Klee that addresses personalities often associated with the circus—acrobats, jugglers, animal handlers, clowns, buffoons— and places these designs in dialogue with the work of Alexander Calder, creator of the 20th century's most famous sculptural circus.

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer: Frequency and Volume

November 03, 2012 - February 03, 2013
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One of the most important international media artists to emerge in the 1990s, Mexican-born artist Raphael Lozano-Hemmer explores the intersection of architecture, public space, media, and performance. His interactive video and sound installation Frequency and Volume (2003) uses radio equipment to allow participants to tune in and listen to different radio frequencies by using their own bodies. According to the artist, he originally developed the piece in response to the Mexican Government shutting down informal or "pirate" radio stations in indigenous communities in the states of Chiapas and Guerrero, addressing the fundamental question of who has access to public space. The work's technical equipment will be on view in an adjacent gallery as a sculptural component, communicating visibly the museum's status as both a receiver and producer of frequencies in a larger network of Bay Area culture. The exhibition is part of the 2012 ZERO1 Biennial.

Press release | Press images

Jay DeFeo: A Retrospective

November 03, 2012 - February 03, 2013
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Premiering at SFMOMA, this major traveling retrospective considers the entire career of Bay Area artist Jay DeFeo (1929–1989), bringing together paintings, small-scale sculptures, photographs, and works on paper, including a number that have not been seen in decades or been on view before. The exhibition will place DeFeo's best-known painting, The Rose (1958–66), in the context of her larger body of work and trace leitmotifs across more than four decades of output. It will also include ephemeral materials such as notebooks, exhibition announcements, and documentary photographs. Jay DeFeo is organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, in close collaboration with the Jay DeFeo Trust. The debut presentation in San Francisco will be overseen by Corey Keller, associate curator of photography, SFMOMA. Catalogue.

Press release | Press images

Jasper Johns: Seeing with the Mind's Eye

November 03, 2012 - February 03, 2013
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A remarkably strong relationship has developed over the past forty years between artist Jasper Johns and various museums and private collectors in the San Francisco Bay Area. Johns's painting Land's End (1963), given to SFMOMA in 1972 by Harry W. and Mary Margaret Anderson, remains a cornerstone post-war work in the museum's collection. In 1978, SFMOMA presented a major survey of Johns's career, and in 2000 organized Jasper Johns: New Paintings and Works on Paper, which traveled nationally. Continuing SFMOMA's significant involvement with the artist, this exhibition brings together for the first time works from Bay Area collections both public and private, and will be supplemented with key works in Johns's own collection. Organized by Gary Garrels, Elise S. Haas Senior Curator of Painting and Sculpture at SFMOMA, in close cooperation with the artist, the presentation features approximately 85 major paintings, works on paper, lead reliefs, and sculptures representing all periods of the artist's work from the 1950s to the present. Catalogue.

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South Africa in Apartheid and After: David Goldblatt, Ernest Cole, Billy Monk

December 01, 2012 - March 05, 2013
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Continuing SFMOMA's renowned scholarship in the field of documentary photography, this exhibition examines the work of three photographers—David Goldblatt, Ernest Cole, and Billy Monk—who have depicted what they have seen during a vital and difficult period in the recent history of South Africa. Goldblatt's book project In Boksburg (1982) portrays a typical suburban white community not far from Johannesburg shaped by what the artist calls "white dreams and white proprieties." The late Cole, a self-taught black South African photojournalist, documented the other side of the racial divide until he was forced to leave his country in 1966. Recently Goldblatt recovered a group of Cole's original prints, organized a retrospective tour of the work, and championed an accompanying book project, Ernest Cole, photographer. Selected works from the book—deeply human without a trace of sensationalism—add an important dimension to Goldblatt's work included here. Monk was a gregarious self-taught photographer who worked as a bouncer in a rowdy Cape Town nightclub in the 1960s. His work, also recovered and reprinted after his death with assistance from Goldblatt, made a raw and beautiful record of the port city's racially mixed population. These three groups of pictures will be complemented by a selection of Goldblatt's post-apartheid photographs. Organized by SFMOMA's Sandra S. Phillips, the exhibition will include approximately 130 works.

Press release | Press images

Don't Be Shy, Don't Hold Back: The Logan Collection at SFMOMA

December 08, 2012 - June 02, 2013
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In 1997, renowned art collectors Vicki and Kent Logan made a gift to SFMOMA of more than 250 contemporary works that significantly strengthened and extended the museum's collection. Additional gifts followed, with 330 total works gifted to the museum over the years. This exhibition marks the fifteenth anniversary of the Logan's gift, highlighting 37 masterworks from the 1960s to the 1990s. Pieces by Chuck Close, Philip Guston, Anselm Kiefer, Bruce Nauman, Gerhard Richter, Ed Ruscha, and Andy Warhol exemplify the foundations of the collection. Works by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Francesco Clemente, John Currin, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Cady Noland, and Jeff Koons, among others, significantly broadened the museum's holdings of artists working in New York after 1980. The Logan gift also transformed the museum's representation of artists working internationally from the 1980s forward, with pieces by the 'Young British Artists' such as Damien Hirst and Tracy Emin; European artist such as Marlene Dumas; and Chinese and Japanese artists such as Takashi Murakami and Zhang Xiaogang. A commission for the museum's atrium by Gu Wenda, which first premiered in the exhibition Inside Out: New Chinese Art in 1997, will be re-installed for the first time since that exhibition.

Press release | Press images

Lebbeus Woods, Architect: February 16 - June 02, 2013
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Acknowledging the parallels between society's physical and psychological constructions, architect Lebbeus Woods (1940 - 2012) depicted a career-long narrative of how these constructions transform our being. Working mostly with pencil on paper, Woods created an oeuvre of complex worlds—at times abstract and at times explicit—that present shifts, cycles, and repetitions within the built environment. His timeless architecture is not in a particular style or in response to a singular moment in the field; rather, it offers an opportunity to consider how built forms are transformative for the individual and the collective, and how one person contributes to the development and mutation of the built world.

Garry Winogrand

March 09 - June 02, 2013
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This retrospective, organized by SFMOMA under the direction of photographer and writer Leo Rubinfien, is the first major touring exhibition and catalogue in 25 years dedicated to the work of Garry Winogrand (1928–1984). Despite being widely recognized as one of the preeminent American photographers of the 20th century, Winogrand has to date been inadequately published and thinly explored by critics and art historians. Postponing the editing of his prodigious body of work and coming abruptly to the end of his life, he completed only five modest books, which contain just a fraction of his total work and merely suggest to the public his great importance to the history of photography. The curatorial research undertaken for this project has made possible the first exhibition and catalogue that reveal to the public the full breadth of Winogrand's oeuvre—a jubilant, epic portrait of America that is Whitmanesque in its ambition to encompass the whole of the nation's life. One of the principal artists in any medium of the eruptive 1960s, Winogrand combines a sense of the hope and buoyancy of American life after World War II with a powerful anxiety, presenting America shining with possibility while also threatening to spin out of control. The exhibition will premier at SFMOMA before traveling to the National Gallery, the Metropolitan Museum, and the Jeu de Paume in Paris. Catalogue.

Press release | Press images

The Elise S. Haas Bequest: Modern Art from Matisse to Marini: March 23 - June 02, 2013
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This exhibition of 35 works will showcase the collection of Elise Haas, including some of the cornerstones of the museum's holdings of modern paintings, sculptures, and works on paper. The installation, accompanied by introductory and interpretive texts, will occupy the first three galleries in the permanent collection and will display signature works by such artists as Henri Matisse, Georgia O'Keeffe, Diego Rivera, Pablo Picasso, and Marino Marini.

Lynn Hershman Leeson: The Agent Ruby Files: March 30 - June 02, 2013
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In 2001 - 2002 SFMOMA commissioned the web project Agent Ruby by acclaimed San Francisco artist Lynn Hershman Leeson for its online platform e.space. Since then, the character Agent Ruby—an artificial intelligence web agent—has conversed with online users, remembering their questions and names, and displaying moods corresponding to positive or negative feelings about them. The work reflects the artist's longstanding interest in the interaction between fictional or virtual characters and real people or situations. This digital and analog presentation of the work, organized by SFMOMA Curator of Media Arts Rudolf Frieling, reinterprets dialogues drawn from a decade-long archive of texts, the "Agent Ruby Files," and reflects on recurrent themes, technologies, and patterns of audience engagement.

Christian Marclay: The Clock

April 06 - June 02, 2013
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SFMOMA will present the San Francisco premiere of artist Christian Marclay's internationally heralded masterpiece—and winner of the Golden Lion at the 2011 Venice Biennale— The Clock (2010). Constructed from thousands of film clips indicating the passage of time, the work excerpts these moments from their original contexts and edits them together to form a 24-hour video montage that unfolds in real time. The Clock is synchronized with local time so that minutes and hours depicted in the work also pass simultaneously in the viewer's real time. Spanning countless periods and genres, The Clock features time-related moments both iconic and obscure—often showcasing a clock or watch—ranging from silent classics and action blockbusters to Westerns and foreign films. The exhibition will take place during SFMOMA's final months in its current building before it temporarily closes for expansion construction and launches into extensive off-site programming in June 2013.

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PROGRAMMING DURING SFMOMA BUILDING CONSTRUCTION

June, 2013 - January, 2016 (Dates subject to change)
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As part of the next phase of its expansion project, SFMOMA will go beyond its walls and directly into the community with extensive off-site programming during the construction of its new building. An array of collaborative and traveling museum exhibitions, site-specific installations, and neighborhood festivals will unfold throughout the Bay Area, from the summer of 2013 to early 2016. During this two-and-a-half-year period, SFMOMA will experiment with new ideas, engage in dialogue with a range of cultural partners, and create innovative ways to experience the museum's collection, bringing the best of these ideas and initiatives back into its newly expanded home in 2016. Additional off-site programs are currently in development; as plans evolve, more details will continue to be announced.

Bay Area Museum Partnerships
At partner venues, SFMOMA will co-organize major thematic exhibitions—one approximately each season—that highlight both iconic and lesser-seen works from all areas of the museum’s holdings and provide new contexts for viewing and understanding those artworks. Current museum partners include the Asian Art Museum; Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University; Contemporary Jewish Museum; Museum of the African Diaspora; Oakland Museum of California; and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Exhibitions scheduled from summer 2013 to summer 2014 include:

• Beyond Belief: 100 Years of the Spiritual in Modern Art (June 27–October 27, 2013)
On view at the Contemporary Jewish Museum
Beyond Belief will assemble approximately 60 works in various media—painting, sculpture, photography, video, and installation—to create a conversation about the spiritual dimensions of 20th- and 21st-century art. Objects that have long been appreciated for their contributions to the development of modern and contemporary art will be reassessed through the lenses of religion, metaphysics, philosophy, and Eastern thought. Drawn from SFMOMA’s collection, the exhibition will include works by early 20th-century visionaries such as Paul Klee and Piet Mondrian, mid-century innovators from Jackson Pollock to Mark Rothko, and leading postwar artists including Bruce Conner, Brice Marden, Agnes Martin, Nam June Paik, and Kiki Smith. Beyond Belief is co-organized by Karen Tsujimoto, curator; Jeanne Gerrity, curatorial associate; and Daniel Schifrin, writer-in-residence, at the Contemporary Jewish Museum; and Janet Bishop, curator of painting and sculpture; Corey Keller, curator of photography; Caitlin Haskell, assistant curator of painting and sculpture; and Peter Samis, associate curator of interpretation, at SFMOMA.

• Flesh and Metal: Body and Machine in Early 20th-Century Art (November 13, 2013–March 16, 2014)
On view at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University
Art in the first half of the 20th century is often discussed as a tension between the utopian, impersonal world of the machine and the uncontrollable realm of the human psyche. A closer look at work by some of the era’s European and American artists, such as Berenice Abbott, Constantin Brancusi, Giorgio di Chirico, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Germaine Krull, Fernand Léger, and Man Ray, suggests a synthesizing of these two polarities—flesh and metal, body and machine. This show of over 60 paintings, sculptures, photographs, and illustrated books considers how artists reconciled these apparent opposites, producing a wide range of imagery that responded to the complexity of modern experience. Flesh and Metal is co-curated by Hilarie Faberman, Robert M. and Ruth L. Halperin Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Cantor, and Nancy J. Troy, Victoria and Roger Sant Professor in Art at Stanford, in association with Janet Bishop, curator of painting and sculpture; Caitlin Haskell, assistant curator of painting and sculpture; and Corey Keller, curator of photography, at SFMOMA. Throughout 2013, Troy and Faberman will be leading courses with Stanford students, who will assist with designing and presenting the exhibition.

• Public Intimacy: Art and Social Life in South Africa (working title; spring 2014)
On view at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
Taking as a starting point SFMOMA’s growing collection of photography from South Africa and reflecting YBCA’s multidisciplinary approach to programming, this presentation will focus on the ways that artists have explored questions of intimacy, gender, sexuality, and violence in South Africa. Three critical moments of South African history will frame the project: the 1960s, when apartheid measures such as the “Immorality Act” proscribed many forms of intimate relationships; the mid-1990s, the immediate post-apartheid period; and the present. The exhibition will feature contemporary South African artists, performers, and other cultural producers, many of whom have an educational or activist dimension to their work. Public Intimacy is co-curated by Betti-Sue Hertz, director of visual arts, and Marc Bamuthi Joseph, director of performing arts, at YBCA; and Dominic Willsdon, Leanne and George Roberts Curator of Education and Public Programs, and Frank Smigiel, associate curator of public programs, at SFMOMA.

• Gorgeous (working title; summer 2014)
On view at the Asian Art Museum
Gorgeous will present key works from SFMOMA and the Asian Art Museum in provocative and stimulating new contexts to chart the boundaries of beauty and examine one of its most extreme forms. The exhibition will encourage viewers not only to marvel at the works on view, but also to engage the question “What is gorgeous?” From luxurious ornamentation to austere simplicity, from kitsch to camp, gorgeousness is an evolving and dynamic concept that has been conceived in many ways and has taken various visual forms. How does the placement of a Mark Rothko painting near a Buddhist mandala or a 2000-year-old Chinese tomb figure near self-portraits sculpted in soap and chocolate by Janine Antoni, bringing into focus new aspects of each work? Through two very different collections with very different histories, Gorgeous will inspire debate and discovery. Highlights include paintings, sculptures, and photographs from SFMOMA’s holdings by Marcel Duchamp, Jeff Koons, Marilyn Minter, Joan Miró, Meret Oppenheim, Trevor Paglen, and Pablo Picasso. From the Asian Art Museum, the exhibition will feature the 1000-year-old Indian sculpture Durga victorious over the buffalo demon; a gilded and jeweled Burmese Buddhist alms bowl; a Korean cloth with complex calculated geometric designs; a decorated Koran from 16th-century Persia; a set of Chobunsai Eishi silk scrolls, Three Types of Beauties in Edo (1770–1829); and Hua Yan’s gold-surfaced ink paintings Summer gatherings in a mountain villa (1682–1756). Gorgeous will be curated by Allison Harding, assistant curator of contemporary art, and Forrest McGill, chief curator and Wattis Curator of South and Southeast Asian Art, at the Asian Art Museum, in association with Janet Bishop, curator of painting and sculpture, and Caitlin Haskell, assistant curator of painting and sculpture, at SFMOMA.

Outdoor Commissions and Site-Specific Installations
SFMOMA will create temporary interventions into the urban fabric of the city, such as:

• Mark di Suvero at Crissy Field (May 2013–May 2014)
A major outdoor exhibition of Mark di Suvero’s iconic works will be on view near the Golden Gate Bridge. Eight large-scale steel sculptures will be installed at Crissy Field, a former airfield and military base that is now one of the most visited national park sites within the Golden Gate National Parks. Curated by SFMOMA Director Neal Benezra, Mark di Suvero at Crissy Field will be the largest display of the artist’s work ever shown on the West Coast, including a recent sculpture that has never before been on public view. The exhibition coincides with di Suvero’s 80th birthday, taking place more than 70 years after he emigrated from Shanghai to San Francisco—a journey that proved to be a lasting inspiration as the scale and color of the Bridge have inspired di Suvero throughout his life. Presented by SFMOMA in partnership with the National Park Service and the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, the yearlong exhibition will be free to the public and extend the programs celebrating the Golden Gate Bridge’s 75th anniversary.

• SECA Art Award presentations at various locations (fall 2013)
Continuing SFMOMA’s commitment to supporting the local art scene, the next iteration of the museum’s biennial award honoring the achievements of exceptional Bay Area artists has invited nominees to submit proposals for their artwork to be presented outside of the traditional museum gallery context. SFMOMA Assistant Curators Jenny Gheith and Tanya Zimbardo will announce up to four winners on December 13, 2012, and the off-site commissions will begin in the fall of 2013 at various locations. Documentation of the projects will be featured both on the museum’s website and in the accompanying award exhibition catalogue.

• SFMOMA Off-Site in Los Altos (winter 2013–2014)
SFMOMA will host an off-site exhibition in Los Altos, a residential community located in Silicon Valley that has recently been undergoing a unique period of development and transformation. Organized by the museum, the show will feature existing artworks as well as several newly commissioned, site-responsive artist projects that react to the history and culture of the area, the community, and the distinctive character of each artwork’s setting. The work will range in media and scale and will be presented at various locations around Los Altos. The exhibition will be free for all visitors and is organized in association with the City of Los Altos and Passerelle Investment Company.

• Doug Aitken’s Empire at multiple venues (fall 2014)
A multi-location exhibition of Doug Aitken’s Empire (2008–14)—the Los Angeles–based artist’s trilogy of video installations reflecting on migration and myths of the West—will present all three parts of the work together for the first time. Shown simultaneously at different venues, the work comprises Migration, a single-channel work meant to be projected onto billboards or the façade of a building; and Frontier and Black Mirror, designed as multi-channel pavilions with moving image and sound.

• New Work exhibitions (dates and venues TBD)
Presentations of the museum’s ongoing New Work series, which showcases recent work by national and international artists, will take place at off-site locations to be announced. Previous New Work exhibitions have featured artists Matthew Barney, Marilyn Minter, Glenn Ligon, Tatsuo Miyajima, Kara Walker, and Andrea Zittel, among many others.

Traveling Photography Exhibitions around the State
SFMOMA is known internationally as a leader in presenting and collecting photography, and it will bring exhibitions of work from its collection to communities throughout California, including Bakersfield, Riverside, Sacramento, Santa Barbara, and Sonoma. Projects in development include:

• The Provoke Era: Japanese Photography from the Collection of SFMOMA (dates and venues TBD)
SFMOMA has been actively acquiring the work of internationally recognized artists including Masahisa Fukase, Eikoh Hosoe, Daido Moriyama, and Shōmei Tōmatsu since the 1970s, assembling one of the world’s preeminent collections of Japanese photography. The exhibition begins with the avant-garde tradition that emerged in Tokyo in the 1960s and 70s and explores its influence on the diverse photographic practice that continues today. The tumultuous period following World War II proved fertile ground for a generation of Japanese photographers who responded to societal upheaval by creating a new visual language dubbed "Are, Bure, Boke"—rough, blurred, and out of focus. Named for the magazine Provoke, which sought to break the rules of traditional photography, this exhibition traces how Japanese photographers responded to their country's shifting social and political atmosphere.

• Photography in Mexico from the Collection of SFMOMA (dates and venues TBD)
This exhibition surveys a century of photography, beginning with works from the medium's first artistic flowering in the wake of the Mexican Revolution (1910–20) and culminating with contemporary considerations of the U.S./Mexico border region. The show includes work by Edward Weston, Tina Modotti, Lola Álvarez Bravo, Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Manuel Carillo, Graciela Iturbide, Elsa Medin, Pablo Ortiz Monasterio, and Mariana Yampolsky, among others. The featured images reveal a distinctively rich and diverse tradition of photography in Mexico, ranging from the explosion of the illustrated press at midcentury to the intense documentary investigations of cultural traditions, indigenous groups, and urban politics of the 1970s and 80s.