Assembly of Images
On Histories of Race and Representation
February–April 2021
Assembly of Images: On Histories of Race and Representation is a three-month series featuring short films that explore and provide counterpoint to the history of race and the representation of African Americans in cinema and photographic traditions.
Lebbeus Woods
Einstein Tomb
January 18, 2020–May 9, 2021
Lebbeus Woods’s 1980 contribution to Pamphlet Architecture 6 described a hypothetical tomb created to memorialize physicist Albert Einstein and call attention to his theory of general relativity, which considers space and time as a single entity.
Future Histories: Theaster Gates and Cauleen Smith
October 17, 2020–May 23, 2021
Bringing together the work of two interdisciplinary artists, this presentation centers on video projections that each take archival magazine photography as a departure point.
Bay Area Walls
Erina Alejo, Marcela Pardo Ariza and Juan Carlos Rodríguez Rivera, Adrian L. Burrell, Liz Hernández, Muzae Sesay, and Twin Walls Mural Company
Ongoing
New commissions by Erina Alejo, Marcela Pardo Ariza and Juan Carlos Rodríguez Rivera, Adrian L. Burrell, Liz Hernández, Muzae Sesay, and Twin Walls Mural Company consider the pandemic and unfolding crises of 2020 and their impact on Bay Area communities.
Elemental Calder
February 16, 2019–June 6, 2021
This exhibition explores the way the natural world, such as the movement of the sea and the swaying of the wind, provided subject matter and inspiration for many of Alexander Calder’s mobiles.
Julie Mehretu
HOWL, eon (I, II)
Ongoing
Julie Mehretu’s HOWL, eon (I, II) (2017) is an expansive exploration of the American West — its transcendent landscapes and violent colonial history.
Open Ended
Painting and Sculpture, 1900 to Now
Ongoing
This presentation of masterworks and experimental pieces from SFMOMA’s collection of painting and sculptures explores themes that have shaped the history of modern art from the early twentieth century to our own time.
Pop, Minimal, and Figurative Art
Ongoing
This exhibition of works from the 1960s and beyond features Pop and Minimal artists, as well as the work of key figures exploring the human form as subject.
Approaching American Abstraction
Ongoing
This exhibition of selected American artists explores the diverse approaches to abstraction developed since 1950.
German Art After 1960
Ongoing
This exhibition features single-artist galleries devoted to leading German artists such as Georg Baselitz, Anselm Kiefer, Sigmar Polke, and Gerhard Richter.
Close to Home
Creativity in Crisis
Spring 2021–Fall 2021
Close to Home: Creativity in Crisis brings together the deeply personal responses of seven Bay Area artists to the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and the social upheaval of 2020.
Off the Wall
Spring 2021–Fall 2021
These works by five artists break the confines of the picture frame, challenging what constitutes a photograph and how it should be displayed.
New Work: Charles Gaines
Spring 2021–Fall 2021
Charles Gaines uses rules-based procedures to transform trial documents of the Dred and Harriet Scott Decision of 1857 into sound, video, and drawings, including a starscape that disrupts our understanding of rational information and its transmission.
