In 2010, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art will mark its 75th year as a pioneering force in art worldwide and an unparalleled destination for the people of the San Francisco Bay Area. Through special exhibitions, events, public programs, and an anniversary publication, the museum will offer visitors new insight into the artists and individuals that have made SFMOMA a center of innovation and risk-taking in the art world and a cultural beacon on the West Coast. Special programming will also tell the story of how museum staff, artists, and people from the Bay Area and beyond have established at SFMOMA one of the most important collections of modern and contemporary art in the world. Throughout the anniversary season, SFMOMA will present a series of exhibitions under the heading 75 Years of Looking Forward that will tell the story of the artists, collectors, cultural mavericks, and San Francisco leaders who founded, built, and have animated the museum.
Jackson Pollock, Guardians of the Secret, 1943; 48 3/8 in. x 75 3/8 in.; oil on canvas; Collection SFMOMA; Albert M. Bender Collection, Albert M. Bender Bequest Fund purchase; © Pollock-Krasner Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
“SFMOMA is a tremendous resource here in San Francisco, bringing us the most engaging art of our time, providing education and enriching experiences for residents and visitors from neighboring communities and across the world,” said SFMOMA Board Chairman Charles “Chuck” Schwab. “The anniversary celebration is a chance to celebrate all the museum brings to our community and to be inspired about new and creative ways we can expand and improve SFMOMA for the future.”
“SFMOMA has had an extraordinary relationship to the city of San Francisco and the global art community during the past 75 years,” said Director Neal Benezra. “The museum has evolved in tandem with this vibrant community, engaging in a reciprocal exchange of ideas and embracing new ways of thinking. Since its founding in 1935, SFMOMA has been committed to looking forward, and in 2010, we invite the public to join us in celebrating the museum’s future through the lens of its remarkable history.”
From organizing Jackson Pollock’s first solo exhibition in 1945 and hosting the first presentation of Judy Chicago’s feminist opus The Dinner Party in 1979, to being the first museum to collect and present Matthew Barney’s work in 1991 and in 2008 organizing the first U.S. survey of projects by Olafur Eliasson, SFMOMA has consistently broken new ground, challenging the conventional wisdom of what art museums should present and collect. SFMOMA was a pioneer among U.S. museums in collecting photography and establishing programs in film, architecture and design, and media arts.
In its approach to exhibitions, SFMOMA has a proven record of presenting artists at key moments in their careers—whether by offering a fresh look or a reconsideration of an artist’s work, showcasing an artist at a critical moment, or helping to bring greater attention to an artist with an exciting new vision. Recent SFMOMA exhibitions of the work of artists such as Diane Arbus, Robert Bechtle, Philip Guston, Eva Hesse, William Kentridge, Dorothea Lange, Sol LeWitt, Richard Tuttle, and Jeff Wall have been seen by audiences at major museums worldwide, fostering new appreciation for their work.
Over eight decades, SFMOMA has built its collection by championing the most important and challenging artists of our time. Through the vision and generosity of donors like Albert Bender, Elise S. Haas, Harry and Mary Margaret Anderson, Pamela and Richard Kramlich, and Phyllis Wattis, SFMOMA’s collection has achieved international stature. The standout 1991 Haas gift, Henri Matisse’s 1905 masterpiece Femme au chapeau, is SFMOMA’s most celebrated painting and a classic example of Fauvism in the collection. Early gifts of works by Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Rufino Tamayo established SFMOMA’s strength in Mexican Modernism, and a bequest of pictures by Ansel Adams and other Group f/64 members in 1941 anchored the growing photography collection. In recent years, SFMOMA has secured outstanding works directly from the personal collections of artists including Vija Celmins, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Ellsworth Kelly, Brice Marden, Robert Rauschenberg, and Cy Twombly.
In support of the steady and focused growth of its collections and exhibitions, this spring SFMOMA expanded its facilities with a new rooftop sculpture garden, and in April 2009 the museum announced early stage planning for an expansion that will double its gallery space and support continued institutional growth.
A place of learning and inspiration for the Bay Area, SFMOMA takes a unique approach to educational programming by inviting new forms of exchange between the museum and the public. From its earliest days, the museum has been a leader in utilizing media and new technologies to connect with its audiences—from creating a television show about art in the 1950s to launching one of the world’s first museum websites in 1995 and offering rich multimedia content about art via an iPhone application set to launch this December. The museum serves tens of thousands of students each year, offering direct exposure to art and artists. Through lectures, film programs, live and interactive art performances, and family days for audiences of all ages, SFMOMA embraces and reflects the diversity of its community and contributes to the cultural vitality that defines San Francisco.
Anniversary Events and Exhibitions
Beginning in January 2010, SFMOMA will present a series of 75th anniversary events and exhibitions that will give visitors an unprecedented opportunity to experience the scope of SFMOMA’s collection and to celebrate the formative moments, philosophies, and personalities that have influenced the museum’s evolution. In addition, a special 75th anniversary publication will feature never-before-published material chronicling SFMOMA’s history and its impact in the Bay Area and worldwide. A new multimedia museum guide will also be available for use on visitors’ own handheld devices, giving the pubic new pathways into the collection and revealing the colorful stories behind SFMOMA’s growth.
The anniversary festivities will kick off with a free weekend celebration from Saturday, January 16 through Monday, January 18, 2010. Saturday programming will feature artist talks, a community talk show, and special evening performances by artists MTAA and Allison Smith. Sunday will be devoted to families, with hands-on art projects and participatory family interviews about art and artists in the fifth-floor galleries. On Monday, January 18, Martin Luther King Jr. Day and the day SFMOMA was founded 75 years ago, the museum will celebrate the spirit of service by having Smith recreate the “Skills and Service” program first introduced by the museum during World War II. She will be inviting veterans and their families, as well as general museum visitors, to participate in the decoration of a memorial wreath that will be taken to the War Memorial Building on Memorial Day 2010. SFMOMA will also offer free art conservation consulting to visitors who bring in works from their own collections.
www.sfmoma.org
