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Founded
in 1935 as the first West Coast museum devoted to modern and contemporary art, a thoroughly transformed San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), features significantly enhanced
gallery, education and public spaces. With six art-filled terraces, a new sculptural staircase and Roman steps where the public can gather, access to 45,000 square feet of free
art-filled public space and free admission for visitors age 18 and younger, SFMOMA is more welcoming than ever before.
The museum has grown to 460,000 square feet. SFMOMA is now
one of the largest modern art museums in the world. This includes 145,000 feet of interior gallery space, 20,000 feet more than the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the second largest.
Previous to its expansion, SFMOMA had approximately 69,000 feet of exhibition space.
SFMOMA re-opened on May 14, 2016 following its three-year expansion with 19 inaugural
exhibitions It underwent a grand transformation to add a 10-story expansion designed by international architecture firm Snøhetta that nearly triples its gallery space, allowing the
museum to show more of its exceptional collection of modern and contemporary art. The Snøhetta-designed ten-storey addition houses the Fisher collection-1,100 pieces on 100-year loan,
including works by artists such as: Ellsworth Kelly, Roy Lichtenstein, Joan Mitchell, Chuck Close, Agnes Martin, Cy Twombly, Andy Warhol, and Gerhard Richter. The distinctive, wavelike
façade is composed of fiberglass panels, each formed as one-quarter-inch thick panels - their form includes local sand from Monterey Bay.
As a photographer, I am delighted that
SFMOMA now boasts the largest exhibit space devoted to photography in the U.S. SFMOMA has more exhibition space dedicated to photography than the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. Ten percent
of total gallery space in the new SFMOMA museum is reserved for photographic works.
"Photography is one of the foundations on which this house is built … we want to set
it up as the equal of painting here," - Director Neal Benezra said of the new museum.
The ground-floor gallery is free to the public. Richard Serra's monumental 214 ton
sculpture Sequence anchors the new building in place.
"We wanted to integrate the museum with the South of Market landscape and the alleys and streets …the fact that we
have a big glass wall on Howard Street means that even if you don't have time to come in, you can have a glimpse," says Deputy Museum Director Ruth Berson.
The new museum
is an exciting conduit that will allow us all to fully explore the future of art this century.
Visit SFMOMA.org onine.
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