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SFMOMA Commissions Local Artists and Loans Collection Artworks for Chase Center and Thrive City

Works by Calder and Noguchi Will Be On Loan at Chase Center and Thrive City

Released: June 12, 2019 · Download (482 KB PDF)

SAN FRANCISCO, CA — The back-to-back NBA Champion Golden State Warriors and Chase Center, the Warriors’ new 18,064-seat privately financed sports and entertainment arena in the San Francisco’s Mission Bay neighborhood, today announced that Alexander Calder’s mobile Untitled and Isamu Noguchi’s Play Sculpture, previously on display at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), will be loaned to Chase Center and Thrive City for its new art program. SFMOMA has also commissioned, on behalf of the Warriors, Oakland painter David Huffman and San Francisco artists Hughen/Starkweather to create new artworks for the arena.

“SFMOMA is the largest museum of modern and contemporary art in the United States and a thriving cultural center for the Bay Area attracting visitors from around the world,” said Warriors President and Chief operating Officer Rick Welts. “We’re honored to partner with SFMOMA to exhibit these works on loan and to present two new major commissions from local artists. The public art program will be a major reason that Chase Center and Thrive City will be a must-see destination for residents and visitors alike.”

“We are thrilled to be a part of Chase Center by sharing major sculptures from the museum’s collection as well as brand new artist commissions,” said Janet Bishop, Thomas Weisel Family Chief Curator and Curator of Painting and Sculpture at SFMOMA. “The Bay Area–based artists that we invited to create large-scale, wall-based works for Chase Center have responded to its function and context with extraordinary proposals. These new works will no doubt engage visitors for years to come.”

SFMOMA Loans

Isamu Noguchi, Play Sculpture, c. 1975, fabricated 2017; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Accessions Committee Fund purchase; © Estate of Isamu Noguchi / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; photo: Katherine Du Tiel

Calder’s expansive painted metal mobile Untitled, created in 1963, reaches 144 x 324 x 147 inches and weighs approximately 700 pounds. It will be lent from The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at SFMOMA and will be sited at the West Entrance Lobby at Chase Center. Noguchi’s steel Play Sculpture, created circa 1975 and fabricated in 2017, stands at 44 x 103 x 103 inches. It will be located on the plaza at Thrive City.

SFMOMA Commissions

Huffman, a Berkeley native and longtime Oakland resident, is a painter and installation artist who makes abstract work with a social conscience. He holds an MFA from California College for the Arts, where he has been a tenured professor of painting since 2009. His work has been included in numerous group shows in the Bay Area and nationally, including Way Bay (2018) at the Berkeley Art Museum; Portraits and Other Likenesses (2015), which was co-organized by SFMOMA and the Museum of the African Diaspora; and the critically heralded Freestyle (2001) at the Studio Museum in Harlem. A Warriors fan since his youth, Huffman grew up playing basketball and considers it to be an important signifier of African American culture. “I see basketball as a kind of Black ballet,” said Huffman. “It is a rigid game, but it is also about physical expression, performance and freedom.” His commission for Chase Center will be a 16-foot square abstract work that draws upon art historical and urban vernacular forms, and will include stenciled basketball nets, handmade basketball stamps, glitter and drawing.

Hughen/Starkweather is the collaboration of San Francisco–based artists Amanda Hughen and Jennifer Starkweather, who have worked as a team since 2006. Their research-based, site-specific drawings and paintings reinterpret the complex narratives of landscape, creating new and unexpected forms through which to view a place, its history and its possible futures. Works by Hughen/Starkweather have been featured in recent local exhibitions at the Bolinas Art Museum (2017), the Contemporary Jewish Museum (2017) and the Asian Art Museum (2014), and other museums nationally. For Chase Center, Hughen/Starkweather will create a site-specific artwork based on past, present and future maps of the San Francisco Bay Area. The two-dimensional artwork will reflect the dynamic natural and built landscapes of the Bay Area, where present-day street grids dissolve into past landscapes of sand dunes and marshes. Through their art, Hughen/Starkweather prompt new perspectives on shorelines — where land and water meet — and the human, environmental and historical factors that shape these areas.

“When we visited the site, we were struck by the sense of history and future that is present when one looks out onto San Francisco Bay,” said Hughen and Starkweather. “Through this artwork, we hope to reflect the intersections of the unique natural and built environments of the area, and the energy and connections that hinge on the diverse geographies and communities of the Bay Area and beyond.”

Both commissioned works of art will be located inside Chase Center’s East Entrance Lobby.

Other Artworks and Commissions

In addition to the SFMOMA commissions and loaned works of art, Sports & The Arts commissioned 33 artists to be featured inside Chase Center. Separately, international artist Olafur Eliasson will create a signature work for the district, and naming rights partner Chase will provide artwork from their JPMorgan Chase Art Collection, which features more than 30,000 artworks located in 250 offices worldwide, to be included in the JP Morgan Club and Chase Club inside the arena. The Warriors plan to continue to work with local community organizations to highlight their artistic efforts, through a collaboration with archive experts Heritage Werks, to showcase the history of the Warriors and entertainment in the Bay Area.

About Chase Center & Thrive City

Chase Center, an 18,064-seat sports and entertainment arena set to open in September of 2019, will anchor Thrive City, the multipurpose, privately financed complex in San Francisco’s Mission Bay neighborhood consisting of 3.2 acres of publicly accessible plazas and open space that are part of a larger mixed-use development including two office buildings and dozens of unique restaurant and retail locations. Chase Center will play host to games featuring the six-time NBA Champion Golden State Warriors, concerts, cultural events, family shows and more, totaling nearly 200 events per year. Thrive City, the surrounding district of Chase Center, will be a community gathering space providing a slate of year-round health and wellness programming, including Get Fit clinics, yoga sessions, farmer’s markets, ice skating and much more.

About San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

151 Third Street
San Francisco, CA 94103

SFMOMA is dedicated to making the art of our time a vital and meaningful part of public life. Founded in 1935 as the first West Coast museum devoted to modern and contemporary art, a thoroughly transformed SFMOMA, with triple the gallery space, an enhanced education center and new free public galleries, opened to the public on May 14, 2016. Since its inaugural year, the expanded museum has welcomed more than one million visitors annually.

Visit sfmoma.org or call 415.357.4000 for more information.