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Exhibition

Art of California

Greater than the Sum
May 22, 2021–May 29, 2022
Floor 2

Many of the artworks in this exhibition feature common objects: cardboard boxes scavenged from sidewalks, encyclopedias purchased online, and beloved keepsakes inherited from grandparents. Such humble, unexpected origins belie the alchemies that occur in the process of making — and result in artworks inestimably greater than the sum of their parts. Drawn from the museum’s permanent collection, the works in this exhibition bring to the foreground the physicality of the things around us. Along the way, they reveal what is intangible but no less powerful, from private symbols and family lore to forgotten flash points calling for public remembrance.

Header Image:
L: Samuel Levi Jones; Purloin, 2015 (installation view); collection SFMOMA, gift of the Joyner/Giuffrida Collection; © Samuel Levi Jones
M: Chris Corales, Rock Island Line, 2018 (installation view); collection SFMOMA, Accessions Committee Fund purchase; © Estate of Chris Corales
R: Samuel Levi Jones; Mass Awakening, 2019 (installation view); © Samuel Levi Jones