75 Reasons to Live: Henry Urbach on Ewan Gibbs’s San Francisco

Henry Urbach is Helen Hilton Raiser Curator of Architecture and Design at SFMOMA. In 2009 he commissioned a new work from U.K. artist Ewan Gibbs; the result is San Francisco, a portrait of the city in 18 drawings. Urbach describes how Gibbs achieves ethereal atmospheric effects through an extremely systematic method.Remember the end of Manhattan, when Woody Allen asks himself what makes life worth living? In January 2010, during SFMOMA's three-day 75th anniversary celebration, 75 people from the Bay Area creative community gave extremely short talks — 7.5 minutes or less! — on a single collection work of their choosing. Someone called it “manic splendor“ — and it was. You can view all of the talks on The Anniversary Show exhibition page. Or look for them here, on Open Space.