One of the first museums to recognize photography as an art form, SFMOMA has more than 17,800 photographic works, dating from the advent of the medium in 1839 to the digital images of today. Deepening and expanding our commitment to photography, the new Pritzker Center for Photography nearly triples the space dedicated to photography, filling the majority of the third floor. Encompassing fifteen thousand square feet, the Pritzker Center is the largest space permanently dedicated to photography in any art museum in the United States. The center includes enhanced permanent collection galleries and new special exhibition galleries, along with a study center and a Photography Learning Lounge.
The print study center gives visiting scholars and students the opportunity for hands-on viewing of prints, drawings, and photographs. The adjacent meeting space promotes collaboration between curators, scholars, artists, teachers, and the public.
Our innovative Photography Learning Lounge lets you experience photography in a whole new way. Through interactive exhibits, you can explore how photography shapes perceptions of California, create a portrait of yourself without showing your face, and more.
Paul Sack Photographic Trust
Paul Sack, a real estate investor, assembled his collection using the criterion that each photograph depict a building that ostensibly could be bought or leased.
Visitors to the Museum and its Study Center can view an ongoing exhibition of selected works from the Paul Sack Photographic Trust collection.
Current Exhibitions
Assembled Realities
When we see photographs, we often read them as true depictions of reality. But from the earliest years of photography, artists have used a variety of techniques to manipulate and augment our perception of the world. This selection of artworks ranging from the 1920s to the early 2000s offers a glimpse into the experimental ways photographers create impossible realities. Vertiginous architectural layers, dreamlike rooms, and surreal compositions of distorted facades demonstrate that photography can offer an uncanny experience. The photographers featured here collaged materials, overlaid transparencies onto prints, or produced montages from multiple negatives to disrupt our expectations and encourage us to ponder these strange scenes.
This exhibition will be on view on Floor 3 August 30, 2024–June 6, 2025, and is included as part of General Admission.
A Focus on Performance
The relationship between photography and performance is deeply intertwined. Portraits are often records of sitters’ presentations, while self-portraits can reveal the processes photographers employ to know and see themselves. We use the camera as a tool to document events and actions, from performance art to street parades. Photographs also represent and disseminate the various characters and personae of public figures, models, and entertainers as they project their ever-shifting senses of self. Many photographers capture the everyday performance of self-presentation in terms of gender and its related expressions. Their images might convey societal norms — or the promise of identifying beyond the binary of male and female. Performance appears in many forms in this selection of photographs, yet shared across these pictures is humanity’s need to be seen.
This exhibition will be on view in the Collections Study Center August 30, 2024–June 6, 2025. To visit the Collections Study Center, please email studycenterappointment@sfmoma.org. We are open by appointment Monday through Friday, 10 a.m.–noon and 1–4 p.m. and strive to accommodate appointments within two weeks of your request.
Support for the Pritzker Center for Photography is made possible by the Lisa and John Pritzker Family Fund.
The Photography Learning Lounge is generously supported by the McEvoy Family.
Photography Learning Lounge exhibits are supported by
Additional support is provided by Nion McEvoy; a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Exploring the human endeavor, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services. SFMOMA’s Digital Initiatives are generously supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies.
