Current & Advance Exhibition Schedule

June 28, 2021 – 2023

Floor 1 Roberts Family Gallery

Free to See

In a groundbreaking partnership with City College of San Francisco, SFMOMA hosts Diego Rivera’s monumental mural The Marriage of the Artistic Expression of the North and of the South on the Continent, more commonly known as Pan American Unity, in the museum’s Roberts Family Gallery free space. The mural, originally painted in front of a live audience at the 1940 Golden Gate International Exposition on San Francisco’s Treasure Island, is comprised of 10 fresco panels and measures 22 feet high and 74 feet wide (over 1,600 square feet).

It was Rivera’s last project outside of Mexico and is not only a treasured part of San Francisco history, but also one of the most important works of public art in the United States. Pan American Unity is installed in SFMOMA’s free-to-visit Roberts Family Gallery on the ground floor in conjunction with Diego Rivera’s America.

Presenting support for Pan American Unity is provided by Sir Deryck and Lady Va Maughan, Helen and Charles Schwab, Pat Wilson, and anonymous donors. Major support is provided by Doris Fisher, Randi and Bob Fisher, the Koret Foundation, Diana Nelson and John Atwater, The Bernard Osher Foundation, and Sanford Robertson. Generous support is provided by the Breyer Family Foundation, Katherine Harbin Clammer and Adam Clammer, Roberta and Steve Denning, Jean and James E. Douglas, Jr., and John and Ali Walecka. Additional support is provided by Mary Leonard Robinson and Susan Swig. Funding for the conservation of Pan American Unity was generously provided through a grant from the Bank of America Art Conservation Project.

Image: Diego Rivera, The Marriage of the Artistic Expression of the North and of the South on this Continent (Pan American Unity), 1940; © Banco de México Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico D.F. / Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York; image: courtesy City College of San Francisco

July 17, 2021 – March 27, 2022

Floor 6

Mexico City–based architect Tatiana Bilbao considers domesticity from policy to livability. Models, drawings and photographs illustrate Bilbao’s extensive research and proposals in response to how we live today. At the beginning of the design process, the architect and her firm Tatiana Bilbao ESTUDIO take time to identify less visible external factors that influence and shape architecture, such as developer goals and civic regulations, as well as meeting with future inhabitants. This “outside in” approach is expansive but yields greater understanding and accommodation for contemporary lifestyles.

Visitors are invited to consider how advocacy, city planning, architecture and development shape society. The drawings, collage and models on view represent built and unbuilt projects, and are shown together in a large-scale, hand-drawn landscape covering the gallery walls. One section of the exhibition brings into focus the San Francisco neighborhood Hunters Point, whose residents — predominantly people of color — have been subject to years of environmental injustice. Confronting the social and political contexts in which architects work, Tatiana Bilbao Estudio aims to prompt conversation around how to collaboratively transform formerly sequestered neighborhoods into sustainable, inclusive communities.

Generous support for Tatiana Bilbao Estudio: Architecture from Outside In is provided by The Sanger Family Architecture and Design Exhibition Fund. Meaningful support is provided by the Gensler Family Foundation and Emily Rauh Pulitzer.

Image: Tatiana Bilbao Estudio, Collage for Casa Tortugas, Bahia de Banderas, Mexico (2018-present), 2021, SFMOMA. Image: Katherine Du Tiel

September 4, 2021 – January 17, 2022

Floor 5

The painter Joan Mitchell has long been hailed as a formidable creative force. She first attained critical acclaim and success in the male-dominated art circles of 1950s New York, then spent nearly four decades in France creating distinctive, vibrant abstract paintings that draw on landscape, memory, poetry and music.

With its world premiere at SFMOMA and co-organized with the Baltimore Museum of Art, Joan Mitchell is a comprehensive retrospective featuring approximately 80 distinguished works. This exhibition includes rarely seen early paintings that established the artist’s career and colorful large-scale multi-panel masterpieces from her later years. With suites of major paintings, sketchbooks and drawings as well as an illuminating selection of the artist’s letters and photographs, the exhibition opens a new window into the richness and range of Mitchell’s practice.

Presenting support for Joan Mitchell is provided by the Henry Luce Foundation and Helen and Charles Schwab. Major support is provided by Richard and Mary Jo Kovacevich, the Joan Mitchell Foundation, Sanford Robertson, and the Terra Foundation for American Art. Generous support is provided by the Bernard and Barbro Osher Exhibition Fund, Komal Shah and Gaurav Garg, and the Wyeth Foundation for American Art.

Image: Joan Mitchell, Untitled, 1992; Komal Shah and Gaurav Garg Collection; © Estate of Joan Mitchell; photo: courtesy Cheim & Read, New York

October 2, 2021 – March 6, 2022

Floor 7

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer uses air and water, music and voices, text and light to create installations that are participatory and playful while raising questions about memory, poetry, and private and public spaces and environments. A media artist who works at the intersection of art, architecture and performance, Lozano-Hemmer is driven by experimentation, bringing people, places and science together to expand the experiences of our interactions with each other and technology. This scaled-down version of the exhibition planned for last spring presents seven installations that reveal our agency within the “unstable presence” of data streams, atmospheric turbulence and voices of the past.

Generous support for Rafael Lozano-Hemmer: Unstable Presence is provided by Lionel F. Conacher and Joan T. Dea, Debbie and Andy Rachleff, Carlie Wilmans, and Pat Wilson.

Image: Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Sphere Packing: Bach, 2018 (installation view, Unstable Presence, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2021); Borusan Contemporary Art Collection; © Rafael Lozano-Hemmer / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VEGAP, Spain; photo: Katherine Du Tiel

October 16, 2021 – June 5, 2022

Floor 4

For her New Work commission, artist Wu Tsang will create a new sound installation that explores the concept of the B-side. The soundscape will be made in collaboration with Moved by the Motion, a loosely affiliated “band” of interdisciplinary artists who have been creating live performance and film together since 2013. As a filmmaker, movement-based artist and performer, Tsang uses a range of mediums and environments to interrogate constructions of gender, race, class and meaning.

Generous support for New Work: Wu Tsang Presents Moved by the Motion is provided by Alka and Ravin Agrawal, Adriane Iann and Christian Stolz, and Robin Wright and Ian Reeves. Exhibition production generously supported by Kvadrat. In-kind support provided by Erik Bruce Inc. and 181 Fremont Residences.

Image: New Work: Wu Tsang Presents Moved by the Motion, October 16, 2021- June 5, 2022 (installation view at SFMOMA); photo: Katherine du Tiel

November 20, 2021 – August 21, 2022

Floor 3

Constellations: Photographs in Dialogue explores how additions to the collection expand, deepen and complicate the stories a museum can tell. From Edward Weston to Zanele Muholi, the exhibition weaves together historical and contemporary voices, forging new connections within established collecting areas and bringing fresh narratives to light. The photographs on view showcase the collection’s strengths, particularly in Japanese photography, the documentary tradition and work by Bay Area artists. Constellations also highlights SFMOMA’s ever-expanding contemporary photography holdings, featuring artists such as Poklong Anading, Daisuke Yokota, Wendy Red Star and Clare Strand alongside familiar favorites including Imogen Cunningham and Ansel Adams.

Image: Wendy Red Star, Fall, from the series Four Seasons, 2006, printed 2017; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, gift of Loren G. Lipson, M.D.; © Wendy Red Star

December 18, 2021 – May 1, 2022

Floor 4

New York–based, Bay Area native Tauba Auerbach employs a wide range of materials and techniques in a practice grounded in math, science and craft. Focusing on matters of duality, connectedness, rhythm, form and reason, Auerbach’s work undoes what the artist calls the “logical gaze.” S v Z, Auerbach’s first museum survey exhibition, frames their prolific output over the last seventeen years and includes compositions that explore the properties of letters and symbols; drawings and books that subvert binary relationships; trompe l’oeil paintings that manipulate surface and dimension; infrared photographs that document fluid dynamics; weavings and glass sculptures composed of interlocking wave forms; and video that interprets theories in quantum physics.

Major support for Tauba Auerbach — S v Z is provided by Gay-Lynn and Robert Blanding and SFMOMA’s Collectors’ Forum. Generous support is provided by Martha and Bruce Atwater, Joachim and Nancy Hellman Bechtle, Jim Breyer and Angela Chao, Katherine Harbin Clammer and Adam Clammer, Fotene Demoulas and Tom Coté, Roberta and Steve Denning, the Elaine McKeon Endowed Exhibition Fund, Gina and Stuart Peterson, The Sanger Family Architecture and Design Exhibition Fund, Lydia Shorenstein, Sheri and Paul Siegel, and Sonya Yu and Zachary Lara. Meaningful support is provided by Thomas and Lily Beischer, Dolly and George Chammas, and Agnes Gund.

Image: Matthew Millman Photography, courtesy SFMOMA

February 19–May 15, 2022
Floor 4

What is the role of an architect in the age of climate change? Since 2010, Oxman studio founder, Neri Oxman, has asked whether the materials, tools and construction of architecture are sustainable moving forward. Through thought-provoking projects that use new biomaterials and fabrication techniques, Oxman rethinks all facets of the field with a singular objective: to transition from valuing human material wealth that stakes claim to land and resources to a focus on environmental health that restores and advances natural balance to mutually benefit all. With nature as the primary client, the design practice upends the architectural legacy of a human-centered built environment and imagines a radically transformed future.

Generous support for Nature × Humanity: Oxman Architects is provided by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts and The Sanger Family Architecture and Design Exhibition Fund.

Image: Neri Oxman and the Mediated Matter Group, Aguahoja Pavilion (frontal view), 2018; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, gift of Massachusetts Institute of Technology; © Massachusetts Institute of Technology; photo: The Mediated Matter Group

April 9–September 5, 2022

Floor 7

Shifting the Silence features dynamic works by 32 women artists who use the radical language of abstraction to enhance our understanding of the world we inhabit. Named after artist Etel Adnan’s 2020 book about history and existence, Shifting the Silence embraces experimentation, impermanence and subjectivity — bold yet poetic characteristics that mark the art of our time. Featuring recently acquired works by Firelei Báez, Nairy Baghramian, Liz Hernández, Cinthia Marcelle, Tania Pérez Córdova, Lorna Simpson and Haegue Yang, Shifting the Silence harnesses their defiant, yet enlightened energy to explore visual culture, the motivations of its practitioners and its varied influences. This experiential exhibition of art produced over the last quarter century includes sculpture, photography, textile, video, painting and time-based installation.

Image: Firelei Báez, Untitled (Baubo), 2020; collection SFMOMA, Shawn and Brook Byers Fund for Women Artists and purchase, by exchange, through a gift of Peggy Guggenheim; © Firelei Báez

April 9–September 5, 2022

Floor 7

From analysis of DNA to emotional sentiments, the contemporary artists in Speculative Portraits draw from scientific research and technology to expand on ideas of portraiture, identity and human presence. Spanning digital animation to sculpture, the presentation brings together select loans and works from the media arts collection by Heather Dewey-Hagborg, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Rhonda Holberton, Mika Tajima and Gail Wight. A key point of departure for the exhibition and a major acquisition, Lynn Hershman Leeson’s installation Room #8 (2006-18) culminated from the artist’s 12-year investigation into the biological nature of identity.

Image: Mika Tajima, Human Synth (Los Angeles), 2019; collection of Mihail Lari and Scott Murray; photo: Flying Studio, Los Angeles, courtesy the artist and Kayne Griffin, Los Angeles; © Mika Tajima

Opening April 9

Floor 7 Terrace

This sound installation offers a contemplative listening experience for visitors as they enjoy panoramic views of downtown San Francisco and the full reopening of SFMOMA’s outdoor terrace since its temporary closure in March 2020. A single speaker will feature the U.S. debut of Songs Sung in the First Person on Themes of Longing, Sympathy and Release (2003) by the Berlin-based, Scottish artist Susan Philipsz. In this 13-minute presentation, the artist is heard singing acapella versions of songs by Teenage Fanclub, Soft Cell, The Smiths, and Gram Parsons. She often uses popular music in her work because of its capacity to evoke emotional responses and collective memories.

Image: 7th Floor Sculpture Terrace at SFMOMA; photo: Beth LaBerge, courtesy SFMOMA

Opening 2022
Floor 4

The most in-depth examination of the artist’s work in more than 20 years, Diego Rivera’s America will provide a new critical and contemporary understanding of one of the most aesthetically, socially and politically ambitious artists of the 20th century. Through a careful selection of some 160 objects, the exhibition will explore central themes of Rivera’s work in Mexico and the United States from the early 1920s through the early 1940s. During these two key decades in a prolific career, Rivera created a new vision for North America, informed by his travels between Mexico and the United States

Featuring extraordinary easel paintings and drawings of this period, as well as several portable frescoes, the exhibition will highlight the close relationship between Rivera’s mural and studio practices. Diego Rivera’s America will revisit a historical moment when Rivera, more than any other artist of his time, was instrumental not only in forging Mexican national identity, but also in imagining a shared American past and future.

The Presenting Sponsors for Diego Rivera’s America are Bank of America, the Evelyn D. Haas Exhibition Fund, Sir Deryck and Lady Va Maughan, Helen and Charles Schwab, and Pat Wilson. Major support is provided by the Lisa and Douglas Goldman Fund, Mary Jo and Dick Kovacevich Family Foundation, and the Bernard Osher Foundation. Generous support is provided by Jessica and Matt Farron, Mary Robinson, Nancy and Alan Schatzberg, and Margaret V. B. Wurtele. Meaningful support is provided by the Robert Lehman Foundation. Research and planning support for Diego Rivera’s America is provided in part by the Koret Foundation. This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services. Funding for the conservation of Pan American Unity was generously provided through a grant from the Bank of America Art Conservation Project.

Image: Diego Rivera, The Flower Carrier, 1935; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Albert M. Bender Collection, gift of Albert M. Bender in memory of Caroline Walter; © Banco de México Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, D.F. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; photo: Katherine Du Tiel