After a three-year closure, the newly transformed and expanded San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) opened its doors to the public on May 14, 2016.
Purpose-built to showcase the museum’s celebrated collection over ten breathtaking floors, the new SFMOMA was designed by renowned architecture firm Snøhetta. With nearly three times more gallery space than before, the museum opened with 19 inaugural exhibitions, including a curated selection from the distinguished Doris and Donald Fisher Collection, the first presentation of works promised through the Campaign for Art, nearly a full floor devoted to the Pritzker Center for Photography, cherished favorites from SFMOMA’s permanent collection, and works specially commissioned for the new museum. SFMOMA now includes nearly 45,000 square feet of art-filled free public spaces, and will offer free admission for all visitors 18 and younger in perpetuity.( @sfmoma website) #SFMOMA #H2HSFO The Fisher Collection at @sfmoma The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection is among the world’s greatest private collections of contemporary art. Founders of San Francisco–based Gap Inc., the couple began collecting prints to enliven the company’s offices in the mid-1970s, and they soon expanded their efforts to include paintings, sculpture, and drawings. They agreed early on that they would never buy a work unless they both liked it, a decision that has ensured that the collection reflects their shared sensibilities. Never interested in working with an advisor or a curator, they developed their knowledge independently by visiting galleries, museums, and artists’ studios around the world, building lifelong friendships with many artists along the way. As the late Don Fisher once put it: “The collection is the result of our looking a lot and then looking some more.”
The Fishers delved into the work of artists they admired over the course of many years, and as a result the collection is distinguished by significant concentrations of works by Alexander Calder, Ellsworth Kelly, William Kentridge, Anselm Kiefer, Sol LeWitt, Agnes Martin, Gerhard Richter, Richard Serra, and Andy Warhol, among others. Spanning more than three floors of the museum, the initial installation of the Fisher Collection at SFMOMA honors that strength with numerous monographic galleries and highlights the collection’s notable focus on American abstraction; American Pop, Figurative, and Minimal art after 1960; and German art after 1960.
Although the Fishers lived with many favorite artworks in their home, their belief in the power of art to enrich lives and spur creativity led them to share much of their collection with Gap employees by displaying it throughout the offices and in dedicated gallery spaces at the company’s headquarters. A similar spirit has guided the Fishers’ decades-long relationship with SFMOMA. Since the 1980s they have served on the museum’s Board of Trustees, made exceptional gifts of art, and supported numerous major exhibitions, acquisitions, and education programs. (@sfmoma website) #H2HSFO #SFMOMA #fishercollection #GapInc Sculpture garden and Cafe at the @sfmoma We heard the food is good but it was closed when we went #H2HSFO #SFMOMA Super LOVE vertical gardens!!
“Living Wall” at the @sfmoma #SFMOMA #H2HSFO #H2HVerticalGarden We are so at home in the @sfmoma There are 55 Filipinos working here – Roberto Cariño and Paul Bayaua @paulbayaua #SFMOMA #H2HSFO At the SF MOMA @sfmoma with Jose @jlm72471 and Tin @tincmoreno – Dedicated to Annie Kabigting @tshaya
Mark Rothko No.14,1960 –
Mark Rothko was born Marcus Rothkowitz; his family emigrated in 1913 and settled in Portland, Oregon. Rothko attended Yale for two years and moved to New York in 1923.
After a long period of stylistic experimentation, Rothko was prompted toward abstraction by the arrival of European avant-gardists during World War II. His mature works consist of two or three diffuse rectangles of saturated color. Their effect is one of luminosity and floating in an indefinable space. Rothko often worked on a large scale, seeking to envelop the viewer in an experience of intimacy and spiritual transcendence.
In 1964, he began his paintings for the Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas. In 1970, after battling depression, alcoholism, and poor health, Rothko committed suicide in his studio. The chapel was completed the following year. #MarkRothko #SFMOMA #H2HSFO