The new SFMOMA, view from Yerba Buena Gardens; photo: Jon McNeal, © Snøhetta
SAN FRANCISCO, CA (November 2, 2016)—The San Francisco Museum of Art (SFMOMA) today announced the details of upcoming exhibitions at the transformed and expanded museum. With nearly triple its previous exhibition space, the new SFMOMA can now show more temporary exhibitions, additional highlights from its outstanding collection of more than 33,000 works and selections from the Doris and Donald Fisher Collection, one of the world’s greatest private collections of postwar and contemporary art. The upcoming season of exhibitions at SFMOMA recognizes the art and artists of California, features the work of modern masters in focused shows across all media and spotlights the museum’s celebrated expertise in photography.
“This summer we had more visitors than ever before, and watching them experience the new museum during the past six months has been incredibly rewarding. As we head into the second half of our opening year, I am proud that the museum is continuing to present a dynamic program of exhibitions for our visitors from San Francisco and around the world,” said Neal Benezra, Helen and Charles Schwab Director at SFMOMA.
Benezra announced Yours, Mine, and Ours: Museum Models of Public-Private Partnership, a half-day forum on the current state of public/private relationships in institutions of modern and contemporary art, featuring a distinguished panel of museum directors, curators and private collectors from around the world. Coinciding with the 2017 FOG Design+Art Fair in San Francisco, the event will take place in Gallery 308 at Fort Mason Center for Arts and Culture on Friday, January 13, 2017. SFMOMA’s partnership with the Fisher Art Foundation, a compelling new model for museum relationships, will be among the topics discussed at the forum, which will also explore creative ways museums and collectors can work together for the benefit of audiences and the wider museum community. SFMOMA will also participate in a conversation on this topic at Art Basel Miami Beach on Thursday, December 1.
SFMOMA additionally shared updates about artist Julie Mehretu’s commission to create two large-scale paintings — each 32 by 25 feet — that will cover the expansive, angled walls in the museum’s Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Atrium. Mehretu is known for her densely layered abstract paintings and works on paper, which often incorporate the dynamic visual vocabulary of maps, urban planning grids and architectural forms. The work will be exhibited in the museum’s free public space in the fall of 2017 as part of SFMOMA’s art commissioning program, a vital part of SFMOMA’s commitment to sharing the art for our time with the Bay Area and beyond.
Upcoming Exhibition Highlights
Continuing SFMOMA’s exploration of the art and artists of California, Matisse/Diebenkorn will explore the inspiration that Bay Area artist Richard Diebenkorn found in the work of French modernist Henri Matisse in the first major exhibition to present the two artists’ work side by side. Co-organized by SFMOMA and The Baltimore Museum of Art, the San Francisco presentation of the exhibition will be on view from March 11 through May 29, 2017, and will feature nearly 100 paintings and drawings by both artists.
From April 15 through July 23, 2017, the museum also will present Larry Sultan: Here and Home, the first retrospective to examine the work and career of California artist Larry Sultan. Organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the exhibition explores this influential photographer’s 35-year career, from his early conceptual and collaborative projects in the 1970s to his solo, documentary-style photographs. Resonating throughout Sultan’s work are themes of home and family, as well as the construction of identity, facade and storytelling.
The landmark exhibition Edvard Munch: Between the Clock and the Bed, on view at SFMOMA from June 24 through October 9, 2017, will explore the late paintings of the powerful modern master as a starting point to reevaluate his entire career. Organized in partnership with the Munch Museum, Oslo, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the exhibition will bring together approximately 45 of Munch’s most candid and technically daring compositions to reveal a singular artist who is one of modernism’s most significant figures. SFMOMA will be the first venue to present this exhibition.
SFMOMA’s Pritzker Center for Photography, made possible by the Lisa and John Pritzker Family Fund, will showcase leaders in the medium. From January 21 through April 30, 2017, the museum will present the West Coast debut of diane arbus: in the beginning. Organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the exhibition considers the first seven years of the photographer’s career, from 1956 to 1962. Bringing together more than 100 rarely seen photographs from this formative period, the exhibition will offer fresh insights into the distinctive vision of this iconic American photographer. The exhibition will be complemented by a gallery featuring works by artists whom Arbus admired as well as by her contemporaries in New York, including Walker Evans, Louis Faurer, Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, William Klein, Helen Levitt, Lisette Model, August Sander, Weegee and Garry Winogrand, all drawn from SFMOMA’s photography collection.
A special exhibition highlighting the work of Walker Evans will examine the photographer’s fascination with vernacular culture. Organized by the Musée National d’Art Moderne of the Centre Pompidou in Paris and on view at SFMOMA from September 30, 2017 through February 4, 2018, Walker Evans: A Vernacular Style will feature 300 of Evans’s iconic images of 20th-century American culture as well as examples from his personal collection, including signage, postcards and ephemera. This exhibition is curated by Clément Chéroux, incoming senior curator of photography at SFMOMA.
Tomás Saraceno: Stillness in Motion — Cloud Cities, on view December 17, 2016 through May 21, 2017, is a site-specific project that continues the artist’s exploration of visionary floating cities. The immersive installation will transform SFMOMA’s architecture and design galleries into a space of architectural provocation. On view February 11 through August 13, 2017, Bureau Spectacular: insideoutsidebetweenbeyond will feature a large physical model of an urban landscape littered with surrealistic architectural characters and jarring environments by Jimenez Lai, founding partner of architecture studio Bureau Spectacular. Noguchi’s Playscapes, by the multifaceted Japanese American artist Isamu Noguchi, will be on view in the summer of 2017. Focused on the artist’s vision of playgrounds and public spaces, this exhibition will close the gap between art and functionality, and will revisit Noguchi’s ideas of play, recreation and education.
SFMOMA will present upcoming media arts exhibitions from two international artists, Runa Islam and William Kentridge, both on view December 10, 2016 through April 2, 2017 on the seventh floor of the museum. Runa Islam: Verso will explore the materiality of film and its relationship to sculpture, and feature the U.S. premiere of the film Cabinet of Prototypes (2009–10). William Kentridge’s The Refusal of Time (2012) — a multisensory experience that includes projections, sounds, lectures and a kinetic sculpture — will have its West Coast debut as part of this exhibition.
More details about these exhibitions and many other upcoming shows can be found in the SFMOMA Press Room at sfmoma.org/press.