SFMOMA Announces 2025–26 Season, Featuring Matisse’s Femme au chapeau and a New Installation by Rose B. Simpson

SAN FRANCISCO, CA (August 14, 2025, updated January 15, 2026) — The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) unveils an outstanding range of exhibitions for its upcoming season, featuring a new commission by Rose B. Simpson, an exhibition of work from SFMOMA’s photography collection that explores complex and interconnected histories, and major retrospectives for the acclaimed artists Alejandro Cartagena, Suzanne Jackson and KAWS.

Suzanne Jackson: What Is Love, opening September 27, 2025, is the first retrospective devoted to the full breadth of her career and features more than 80 paintings and drawings from the 1960s to the present. (Re)Constructing History, an exhibition featuring works from SFMOMA’s photography collection, opens October 4, 2025, and reconsiders moments from the history of photography, anchored by Carrie Mae Weems’s major series Constructing History.

KAWS: FAMILY opens November 15, 2025, and traces the artist’s multidimensional output over the last three decades in his first major West Coast museum exhibition. Alejandro Cartagena: Ground Rules, opening November 22, 2025, is the first retrospective for the acclaimed photographer, whose project-based works have examined environmental and social issues across a broad range of photographic processes.

Commissioned by SFMOMA for its Floor 4 terrace, Rose B. Simpson: Behold is a monumental bronze sculpture visible from multiple locations in and around the museum, opening January 17, 2026. Matisse’s Femme au chapeau: A Modern Scandal is a remarkable highlight of the museum’s 2025–26 season, as it explores the story behind one of the most iconic works in the museum’s collection and looks at how this 1905 painting—shocking at the time of its debut—has influenced artists and charmed audiences for more than 120 years.

“SFMOMA is proud to celebrate the breadth and complexity of modern and contemporary artistic practice across a wide range of exhibitions in our upcoming season,” said Christopher Bedford, Helen and Charles Schwab Director. “From career-spanning retrospectives to site-specific commissions to exhibitions that spotlight the museum’s collection, our program reflects an ongoing commitment to showcasing work that speaks to the current moment, while honoring the deep legacies that shape it.”

For information on all current and ongoing exhibitions, installations and special projects, visit sfmoma.org/exhibitions.

Suzanne Jackson: What Is Love

September 27, 2025–March 1, 2026

Floor 7

For over six decades, Suzanne Jackson has created lyrical, awe-inspiring paintings influenced by her deep respect for the natural world and continual belief in the connection between all living things. Driven by a search for creative freedom and a bohemian spirit indebted to the San Francisco ethos of the 1950s and 1960s in which she was raised, Jackson has led an expansive artistic life, first and foremost as a painter, and as a dancer, poet, theater designer and an ardent supporter of other artists.

This retrospective, the first devoted to the full breadth of Jackson’s career, celebrates her groundbreaking artistic vision through more than 80 paintings and drawings from the 1960s to the present that emphasize her innovative use of color, light and structure to expand the parameters of painting and illuminate beauty, peace and love. Organized chronologically, the exhibition spans early ethereal compositions on canvas that layer luminous washes of pigment and imagery from her dreams to recent three-dimensional, otherworldly paintings that suspend acrylic paint in midair and are often embedded with materials that draw on ancestral and cultural histories. The presentation concludes with a new large-scale commission that reflects on the global environmental crisis and addresses themes of migration and improvisation.

(Re)Constructing History

October 4, 2025–May 3, 2026

Floor 3

(Re)Constructing History embraces the possibility for photographs to both record an instant and capture the history embedded within the present. Borrowing its title from artist Carrie Mae Weems’s series Constructing History, this exhibition invites audiences to imagine the layers of history we encounter through a seemingly fixed image.

Across three galleries, photographs explore complicated, painful and familiar histories. The first gallery examines Wall Street as a symbol of American power through its historic and modern depictions, while the second features artists who rework visual traditions through reference and appropriation. The final gallery considers how photography is uniquely positioned to expose the hidden forces behind changing environments and landmark formation.

In addition to Weems, this presentation celebrates contemporary Black artists Nona Faustine, Carla Williams and Dawoud Bey as anchors in each respective gallery. These artists create works that move beyond static, fixed documents, offering imaginative images that reveal stories of Black life previously unseen or unconsidered.

KAWS: FAMILY

November 15, 2025–May 3, 2026

Floor 4

KAWS: FAMILY is a dazzling exploration of the multidimensional work of American artist KAWS. Marking the artist’s first major museum exhibition on the West Coast, it traces the artist’s output over the past three decades through its keen ability to connect to shared emotions and culture. From paintings, drawings and sculptures to advertising interventions, product collaborations and limited-edition collectible toys, visitors will encounter the many creative expressions of KAWS’s distinctive language using recurring characters and pop culture appropriations.

At the heart of the exhibition is FAMILY (2021), a larger-than-life bronze sculpture that portrays KAWS’s beloved characters COMPANION, BFF and CHUM grouped as an intimate family unit. Through their gestures of closeness and vulnerability, visitors can see themselves reflected in these figures, creating a shared sense of kinship and empathy. Borrowing from popular animated characters and cultural icons, KAWS’s characters recontextualize familiar imagery, creating a dialogue around cultural memory and contemporary life.

Alejandro Cartagena: Ground Rules

November 22, 2025–April 19, 2026

Floor 3

Alejandro Cartagena: Ground Rules is the first major retrospective of the acclaimed photographer, bringing together over two decades of his work through an expansive multi-series presentation. Born in the Dominican Republic and based in Monterrey, Mexico, Cartagena explores pressing social and environmental issues through a striking range of photographic practices that includes documentary images, collage, appropriated vernacular photographs and AI-generated video. His work captures the complexities of suburban sprawl, the US-Mexico border and increasing economic inequality. As visually dynamic as they are politically incisive, his photographs prompt viewers to question the systems that shape our world. Though rooted in Mexico, Cartagena’s photographic series speak to shared global conditions of migration, environmental crisis and unchecked development, offering a powerful reflection on the broader forces defining life in the 21st century.

Rose B. Simpson: Behold

January 17, 2026–ongoing

Floor 4

Behold, the latest work by mixed-media artist Rose B. Simpson, is a colossal outdoor sculpture commissioned by SFMOMA for its Floor 4 terrace. Simpson, who resides in Santa Clara Pueblo, New Mexico, is one of our moment’s most important sculptors, working with clay and mixed materials in a matrilineal tradition that bridges past, present and future. At over 24 feet tall, the honey-colored bronze Behold will be visible from various locations in and around the museum, including Yerba Buena Gardens across the street.

The mother and child figures depicted in the sculpture are connected by beaded necklaces strung from their shoulders and a bending, ornamental ladder that arcs between their heads, illuminating a mental and emotional connection that flows between them. In the artist’s words, “Like branches of a tree, a child grows from the hip of a monumental parent.” The figures’ steady outward gazes also connect the sculpture, visitors and the museum itself to its surroundings.

Behold is a profoundly hopeful and vulnerable artwork. As Simpson says, “It asks us to be human with each other, to change our narrative through wonder, witness and a foundation in the soft warmth of our humanity.”

Matisse’s Femme au chapeau: A Modern Scandal

May 16–September 13, 2026

Floor 4

Henri Matisse ignited passionate controversy in 1905 with the public debut of Femme au chapeau (Woman with a Hat) at the Salon d’Automne in Paris. The portrait of the artist’s wife, Amélie, was at the center of a defining moment of rupture in the history of modern art, shocking audiences with its seemingly carefree brushstrokes and bright hues that purposefully departed from observed reality. It was established as the leading image of Fauvism, the first French avant-garde art movement of the 20th century, and its impact has continued for more than 120 years.

Matisse’s Femme au chapeau: A Modern Scandal will shed new light on how the painting—now an icon of the museum’s collection—made its mark on art history. Positioning Matisse in dialogue with his peers and followers, as well as artists working today, this major exhibition will examine in greater depth than ever before the painting’s historical context, subject, circulation and impact.

CREDITS

Suzanne Jackson: What Is Love is co-organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. Major support is provided by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Lead support for Suzanne Jackson: What Is Love at SFMOMA is provided by Randi and Bob Fisher and the Stone Charitable Remainder Trust. Major support is provided by Mary Jo and Dick Kovacevich and The KHR McNeely Family Foundation, Kevin, Rosemary, and Hannah Rose McNeely. Significant support is provided by Pamela J. Joyner and Alfred J. Giuffrida and Deborah and Kenneth Novack. Meaningful support is provided by Ethan Beard and Wayee Chu, Lorna Meyer Calas and Dennis Calas, Dolly and George Chammas, Rummi and Arun Sarin Painting and Sculpture Fund, Komal Shah and Gaurav Garg, Sheri and Paul Siegel Exhibition Fund, Susan Swig, Wagner Foundation, Diane B. Wilsey, and Sonya Yu. Meaningful support is also provided by Fashion Partner Max Mara. The Walker Art Center’s presentation is made possible with support from the Pohlad Family.

Lead support for KAWS: FAMILY is provided by the Phyllis C. Wattis Fund for Traveling Exhibitions.

Alejandro Cartagena: Ground Rules is co-organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Fundación MAPFRE, Madrid. Major support of Alejandro Cartagena: Ground Rules at SFMOMA is provided by Katie Hall and Tom Knutsen, Kate and Wes Mitchell, and the Pritzker Exhibition Fund in Photography. Significant support is provided by The Black Dog Private Foundation, Jim Breyer, Concepción S. and Irwin Federman, and Nion McEvoy and Leslie Berriman. Meaningful support is provided by Lisa Stone Pritzker and the Mary Jane Elmore West Coast Exhibition Fund. This project is carried out with the support of Fundación Jumex Arte Contemporáneo.

Major support for (Re)Constructing History is provided by the Pritzker Exhibition Fund in Photography.

Major support for Rose B. Simpson: Behold is provided by Katie and Matt Paige. Meaningful support is provided by Jonathan Gans and Abigail Turin, James Park, and Lisa Stone Pritzker Family Fund.

Lead support for Matisse’s Femme au chapeau: A Modern Scandal is provided by Mimi and Peter Haas Fund. Presenting support is provided by Bank of America and Dana and Bob Emery. Major support is provided by Neal Benezra Exhibition Fund, Carolyn and Preston Butcher SFMOMA Exhibition Fund, and Davidow Family Fund for Exhibitions of Modern Art. Significant support is provided by Mary Jane Elmore, Christine and Pierre Lamond, The Elaine McKeon Endowed Exhibition Fund, and Deborah and Kenneth Novack. Meaningful support is provided by Alka and Ravin Agrawal, Dolly and George Chammas, Laurie and Jim Ghielmetti, Robert Lehman Foundation, Stuart G. Moldaw Public Program and Exhibition Fund, Nancy and Alan Schatzberg, Thomas W. Weisel and Janet Barnes, Bobbie and Mike Wilsey, Pat and Bill Wilson Exhibitions Fund, and Anonymous.

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Image Credits:

Carla Williams, Side, from the series How to Read Character, 1990, printed 2024; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Accessions Committee purchase, by exchange, through a gift of Michael D. Abrams; © Carla Williams; photo: courtesy SFMOMA

Suzanne Jackson, Hers and His, 2018; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, purchase, by exchange, through a gift of Peggy Guggenheim; © Suzanne Jackson, courtesy Ortuzar, New York; photo: Timothy Doyon

Carla Williams, Side, from the series How to Read Character, 1990, printed 2024; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Accessions Committee purchase, by exchange, through a gift of Michael D. Abrams; © Carla Williams; photo: courtesy SFMOMA

Alejandro Cartagena, Carpoolers #21, from the series Carpoolers, 2011-12; © Alejandro Cartagena, courtesy the artist

KAWS, FAMILY, 2021; private collection; © KAWS

Rose B. Simpson; courtesy the artist, Jessica Silverman and Jack Shainman Gallery; photo: Minesh Bacrania

Henri Matisse, Femme au chapeau (Woman with a Hat), 1905; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, bequest of Elise S. Haas; © 2025 Succession H. Matisse / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; photo: Ben Blackwell