The exhibition The More Things Change (“TMTC“) samples SFMOMA’s collection to present a range of works made since 2000, offering a selective survey of the art of the last 10 years and a thematic and psychological portrait of the decade. Some common themes emerge: fragmentation, fragility, entropy, metamorphosis, reconfiguration. The exhibition itself will continually change, with a varying array of works on view. TMTC is also an unprecedented collaboration among all five curatorial departments at the museum: over the course of... More

This is the ninth in a multipart series unofficially conjoined to the publication of Radical Light: Alternative Film & Video in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1945–2000, and the accompanying film series currently being presented by the Pacific Film Archive and San Francisco Cinematheque (in partnership with SFMOMA).... More

The More Things Change, which opens today, offers a selective look at contemporary art made in the last 10 years, drawing on a range of works from the museum’s collection to present a thematic and psychological portrait of the decade. Some common threads emerge: fragmentation, fragility, entropy, metamorphosis, reconfiguration — and the exh... More

It came as no surprise to me that Acey Thompson, who snapped this shot, and model Marcus Gannuscio are both artists. I love the black hoodie and yellow shirt next to this blue and white Ellsworth Kelly. Acey fills us in on their trip to the museum:

“Marcus is my boyfriend, and we live together up in Portland, OR. We’re both from Califor... More

“can I devil worship with the new iphone?? LOL”
—Kanye West

The 1850s were a good time for Satanism in France. Riding the rising tide of the Second Empire, French intellectuals praised the virtues of cynicism and rebellious confrontation. This fluorescence of Satanic devotion was influenced by a nuanced poetics of Satanism in England: Milton’s Paradise Lost and Byron’s poetics of heroism. Already in those authors we can detect a paradoxical understanding of Satan’s significance. Robert Southey, for instance, called Byron’s group ... More

All of us at SFMOMA are delighted to wish Wayne Thiebaud a very happy 90th birthday!

Bay Area Ecstatic, my first programming effort for an SFMOMA film show, plays this Thursday, 7 p.m., in the Phyllis Wattis Theater. Note to followers of The THE END Tour: this week’s post has been preempted by this exploration of later forms of Bay Area ecstatic cinema. Please enjoy, and check back next week for your next Maclaine fix, the co... More

Thanks to Ken Osborn, aka Misterken, for taking this great photo of visitors interacting with George Segal’s Chance Meeting. Ken explains it further:

“I went to SFMOMA with friends to see the Fisher Collection (Calder to Warhol). While it was truly an impressive collection, I was most fascinated by New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape. Perhaps that’s my bias as a ‘photographer.’

“While looking at the art on the rooftop garden, I waited for a group in front of this sculpture so I could ta... More

Alameda Naval Air Force Base, Hangar 20, then and now:

OPENrestaurant is all set to transform the former Navy hangar and current home to the St. George Distillery into OPENwater: educational think tank, temporary restaurant, watershed installation, and flotilla!

How does water flow in the Bay Area? OPENwater is SFMOMA’s latest collaboration ... More

I don’t drink coffee, so let’s have a beer… My posts are always collaborations and are presented in two parts. Part 1 is a summary of a shared experience with my collaborator(s). Part 2 is a response often in the form of a project created specifically for this blog.

In response to conversations after attending SF Opera’s product... More

[Our "One on One" series features artists, writers, poets, curators, and others, from around the country, responding  to a collection work of their choosing. You can follow the series here. Today, please welcome Cincinnati poet, the marvelous Mr. Dana Ward ... And a happy belated to Art Garfunkel, 69 last Friday.]

When I set out to write about Cory ... More

This is the eighth of a multipart series unofficially conjoined to the publication of Radical Light: Alternative Film & Video in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1945–2000, and the accompanying film series currently being presented by the Pacific Film Archive and San Francisco Cinematheque (in partnership with SFMOMA).

Wi... More

Thank you, Ken Yee (aka yuweiquan), for capturing this!

Plus, Ken has quite the story behind his trip to SFMOMA that day:

I wanted to check out and attempt photographing something I had observed on a rooftop garden visit from a couple of weeks earlier. I was sitting to the left of the Ellsworth Kelly (with the Louise Bourgeois behind), admiring jus... More

Several times a year I find myself on the CCA campus in Potrero Hill to attend readings presented by Small Press Traffic in Timkin Hall. Those visits always entail the long and drafty walk down the broad corridor, whose walls are always populated with student’s works. Historically I’ve been too absorbed in bliss, ambivalence, or despair... More

I don’t drink coffee, so let’s have a beer… My posts are always collaborations and are presented in two parts. Part 1 is a summary of a shared experience with my collaborator(s). Part 2 is a response often in the form of a project created specifically for this blog.

My first co-conspirator for this grand blog experiment is Scotti... More

Bill Fontana is a composer and sound artist. SFMOMA has commissioned what will be a truly fantastic new site-specific installation by the artist, opening this month.  Bill talks here about his appreciation for the sound qualities of Dan Graham’s 1994 sculpture Double Cylinder (The Kiss).  I remember that after his talk, one listener sugges... More

This is the seventh in a multipart series unofficially conjoined to the publication of Radical Light: Alternative Film & Video in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1945–2000, and the accompanying film series currently being presented by the Pacific Film Archive and San Francisco Cinematheque (in partnership with SFMOMA).

With my friend Brian Darr, proprietor of the great Bay Area cinephilia blog Hell on Frisco Bay, I’ve been scouting out the San Francisco locations used in Christopher Maclaine’s Masterpiece, THE END.  What began as an attempt to identify and document what physically remains of the often mysterious places at which THE END was shot has evolved into a larger project to also analyze the film, and to identify all its many actors and extras, all of whom appear uncredited. To read the full version of these preliminary remarks, including ... More

The Flickr universe just got a little smaller.  Back in August I posted a Flickr Pic of the Week by Chris Gruhl, a.k.a Shadowgolem.  I loved Chris’s image and associated text because he took an artwork he didn’t particularly appreciate and he used his creativity to make it more to his liking:

Anne Bast, SFMOMA’s intellectual pro... More

Fillip contemporary art journal in conversation tonight in SFMOMA’s Koret Center (2nd Floor) starting at 7pm.
Kristina Lee Podesva, Editor and Jeff Khonsary, Publisher. Hosted by Joseph del Pesco.

http://fillip.ca

Creativity Explored is a nonprofit visual arts center where artists with developmental disabilities create, exhibit, and sell art. The center provides studio artists with opportunities to visit Bay Area museums, galleries, and local artists’ studios. Creativity Explored studio artists are accompanied by an art instructor to experience and participate in the Bay Area arts community. On October 14th, they went to the SFMOMA, a popular destination amongst the artists.

I accompanied Andrew Bixler, Whitman Donaldson, Vincent Jackson, Melody Lima, ... More

[Our "One on One" series features artists, writers, poets, curators, and others from around the country, responding however they wish to a collection work of their choosing. You can follow the series here. Today, very pleased to welcome Darrin Alfred, associate curator of architecture, design, and graphics at the Denver Art Museum. ]

Not long after S... More

This is the sixth in a multipart series unofficially conjoined to the publication of Radical Light: Alternative Film & Video in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1945–2000, and the accompanying film series currently being presented by the Pacific Film Archive and San Francisco Cinematheque (in partnership with SFMOMA).

With my fri... More

When Suzanne Stein invited me to become a blogger for Open Space my first thought, outside of being complimented, was how I would add one more thing to my crazy life. If you don’t know me, here ya go. For 40+ hours a week I’m the Director/Curator of the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery. We produce 9 exhibitions a year in three locations, s... More

These first four images are from a collaborative curatorial project I did with the German photographer Matthias Geiger a few years ago. I’ve always liked this group. Then I heard Michael Arcega speak on Monday night, and he talked about his interest in pidgin languages. He put the Phillipines National Anthem, which is in Tagalog, through a computer Word file to get it “translated” into proper English, which of course came out as a pidgin English. (He then had an opera singer sing the new version). As a NY Times crossword addict, I thought... More

The event is now over. Thanks for coming! Hopefully the discussion was interesting and thought-provoking enough that you’d like it to continue it here in the Open Space online world. Please post any additional insights, unanswered questions, lingering thoughts, and overall criticism, and I will add my own recap and post-event thoughts in the com... More

[Five questions to SFMOMA artists, staff, or guests. Carolyn Eames, who has worked at SFMOMA for 25 and 1/2 years, retires today. Carolyn started in admissions in 1984 when SFMOMA was still located on Van Ness Avenue. When the museum moved to its current Third Street location in 1995, she joined the Operations Department as the museum’s receptionist. It would be hard to imagine anyone else knowing as much as she does about SFMOMA. Carolyn, everyone here will miss you tremendously, and we wish you all the best!]

Do you collect anything?

I colle... More

You may have missed the Art Publishing Now summit and fair at Southern Exposure this month, but you can still get an overview of publishing activity in the SF Bay Area. These one- to two-minute videos offer capsule introductions to a handful (15) of the people behind the print (or web) in the SF Bay Area. Two longer conversations recorded before the event, with Stretcher and Art Practical, are included at the end. For more information on the weekend, or to visit the archives, click over to the APN website.

ARTHUR ALLAN was recently commissioned to do a Public Service Announcement for Yerba Buena Gardens. The announcement aired this past weekend at an event held in the gardens and was attended by Mayor Gavin Newsom.

(This Thursday, October 21st, at 7 p.m., I will be hosting an Open Space Thursday event — “Design Is Dead! Long Live Design?” — in the Koret Visitor Education Center at SFMOMA. More details are here.)

This past spring I was part of a search committee charged with finding the next chair of Graphic Design at the California College of the Art... More

[Our regular feature, Collection Rotation. Every month or so I invite a someone to organize a mini-“exhibition” from our collection works online. Please welcome none other than TYLER GREEN to Open Space for this month’s iteration. Welcome, Tyler!]

For years SFMOMA’s paintings and sculpture collection galleries effectively began in 1906, wit... More