Bay Area Walls

SFMOMA presents a series of commissions and other site-responsive wall projects by local artists that actively engage with pressing issues of our time. Many of 2020’s inaugural projects delved into the consequences of a year of social isolation and unrest, polarizing news, racial injustice, economic crises, all against a backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic. Now ongoing, the program is designed to support local artists who are keenly attuned to our community and current moment.

Floor 2

Gene Luen Yang: Bay Area Hoops
August 31, 2024–June 2025
Comics artist and writer Gene Luen Yang’s mural features the stories of three athletes from local basketball teams — Stephen Curry, Jeremy Lin, and Fran Belibi — and links them to three aspects of the game: the three-point shot, the pick and roll, and the slam dunk. Yang is the creator of Dragon Hoops, the acclaimed nonfiction graphic novel centered on the varsity boys’ basketball team at Oakland’s Bishop O’Dowd High School and their triumphant 2014–-15 season. Celebrated for his formal innovation and intricate storytelling, Yang believes that comics can illuminate everything from difficult histories to individual identities.

Floor 3

Jenifer K Wofford: VMD
New Mural: Opened October 12, 2024
Jenifer K Wofford’s painted mural pictures Victoria “Vicki” Manalo Draves, the first Asian American Olympic gold medalist, suspended in a pike in a vast gradient of color. Born and raised in San Francisco’s South of Market district, the Filipina American diver was also the first woman awarded gold medals for both the ten-meter platform and the three-meter springboard competitions at the London 1948 Olympic Games. For VMD, Wofford was compelled by imagining a “soft inward focus combined with the mannered tension in her body’s position, both completely on display and totally inside herself.”

Floor 5

David Huffman: Portals
New Mural: Opened October 12, 2024
Painter David Huffman will create his first wall-sized work for the Bay Area Walls series. Huffman has long used basketballs to reference his community and personal history, weaving the imagery into complex and gorgeous abstract paintings.