SFMOMA’S NOW PLAYING SERIES RETURNS THIS FALL WITH THREE THURSDAY-EVENING ARTIST TAKEOVERS

SFMOMA’s Now Playing series continues this fall with headline musical acts by MEN (featuring JD Samson of Le Tigre); The Beth Custer Ensemble; and Sylvano Bussotti and sfSoundGroup, who will take over SFMOMA for three interactive Thursday evenings. Each event is free with museum admission and features live performances in the atrium, gallery talks, complimentary bites, cash bars, and provocative tasting menus for sale in the Rooftop Garden from Meatpaper magazine and Blue Bottle Coffee Co. Remaking the museum as platform, stage, and promenade, Now Playing invites artists to animate SFMOMA in unexpected ways, allowing partygoers to experience the museum as projection chamber, food as education and art, and artists playing the architecture.

Now Playing: MEN
Thursday, September 16, 6–9:45 p.m.
7 p.m. Screening by Ridykeulous
9 p.m. Performance by MEN

Brooklyn-based artist JD Samson has dubbed this evening her SFMOMA “takeover.” In MEN, Samson (Le Tigre, Hirsute) joins Ginger Brooks Takahashi (LTTR, The Ballet) and Michael O’Neill (Princess, Ladybug Transistor) to push the form and content of dance music in radical directions. They play the Haas Atrium, which also features installation elements by Celeste Dupuy Spencer. Samson has invited Ridykeulous, a project by A. L. Steiner and Nicole Eisenman, to make their West Coast debut in the Phyllis Wattis Theater. Meatpaper magazine serves up delectable food in the Rooftop Garden.

Now Playing: The Beth Custer Ensemble
Thursday, October 21, 6–9:45 p.m.
7 p.m. Films by Alexander Hammid with music by Beth Custer Ensemble
9 p.m. Screening of My Grandmother with music by Beth Custer Ensemble

While the galleries await the installation of our fall exhibitions, guests can roam the museum’s open spaces recharged by artists. In the Phyllis Wattis Theater, San Francisco Cinematheque presents films by Alexander Hammid, a significant if underappreciated figure in 20th-century cinema who collaborated with Maya Deren on perhaps the avant-garde’s most influential work, Meshes of the Afternoon. The Beth Custer Ensemble premieres new scores for some of Hammid’s earliest films, then performs an original score to Mikaberidze’s long-banned Soviet silent film My Grandmother in the Haas Atrium. San Francisco’s Muistardeaux Collective presents a site-specific work in the ga lleries, and Meatpaper magazine is back with food on the roof.

Now Playing: Sylvano Bussotti and sfSoundGroup
Thursday, December 2, 6–9:45 p.m.
7 p.m. U.S.-premiere screening of Bussotti’s restored Rara (film) (1969), with live piano accompaniment by the artist
9 p.m. Performance of various Sylvano Bussotti works by the artist and sfSoundGroup

In collaboration with the Italian Cultural Institute, San Francisco Cinematheque, and the Progetto Sonora-CEMAT, SFMOMA presents an evening of contemporary music by artist Sylvano Bussotti, curated by Luciano Chessa. The evening begins with a screening of Bussotti’s silent film entitled Rara (film), which the artist will accompany with a live performance from the piano. Rara (film) explores Italian avant-garde culture in the 1960s via “filmed portraits” of leading figures of the era, including silver-screen diva Franca Valeri, poet Dario Bellezza,  ex-pats of Julian Beck’s Living Theater, and actress Daria Nicolodi, the cult leading lady of Dario Argento’s films. Following the screening, sfSoundGroup joins the composer to present a sampling of Bussotti’s oeuvre from 1958 to the present. As always at Now Playing, Meatpaper magazine leads a “Food & Thought” event in the Rooftop Garden.

SFMOMA: Now Playing is free with museum admission. Tickets are available only on-site at the museum starting at 6 p.m. The public may visit sfmoma.org/nowplaying for more information.

Media support for SFMOMA: Now Playing is provided by San Francisco magazine.