It’s 5:45pm on May 24th! We’re counting down the days til SFMOMA shuts its doors, at 5:45pm on Sunday June 2.

SFMOMA’s four-day long Countdown Celebration extravaganza starts THURSDAY May 30th and is FREE to all. Join us there, or follow my countdown series here.

“We’ll look at five works for 10 minutes each,” I said after my group assembled in the Koret Visitor Education Center for SFMOMA’s version of Slow Art Day. “Please don’t read the placards. I prefer you not take notes. The works’ identity won’t be revealed until the follow-up discussion here in the cen... More

It’s 5:45pm on May 23rd! We’re counting down the days til SFMOMA shuts its doors, at 5:45pm on Sunday June 2, starting with Brice Marden’s Ten Days, Suite J:

SFMOMA’s four-day long Countdown Celebration extravaganza starts THURSDAY May 30th and is FREE to all. Join us there, or follow my countdown series here.

The Elise S. Haas Bequest: Modern Art from Matisse to Marini is on view at SFMOMA till June 2. Open Space is pleased to host a series of posts highlighting Mrs. Haas’s network of personal connections from SFMOMA Assistant Curator of Painting and Sculpture Caitlin Haskell and featuring graphics by designer Adam Machacek.

Agnes E. Meyer diagram by... More

The Elise S. Haas Bequest: Modern Art from Matisse to Marini is on view at SFMOMA till June 2. Open Space is pleased to host a series of posts highlighting Mrs. Haas’s network of personal connections from SFMOMA Assistant Curator of Painting and Sculpture Caitlin Haskell and featuring graphics by designer Adam Machacek.

Elise S. Haas diagram by ... More

The Elise S. Haas Bequest: Modern Art from Matisse to Marini is on view until SFMOMA temporarily closes its doors June 2, and as we wind down these last few days, Open Space is pleased to host a series of posts from SFMOMA Assistant Curator of Painting and Sculpture Caitlin Haskell highlighting one of the museum’s most important benefactors, Elis... More

In 1954 Garry Winogrand, then a twenty-six-year-old commercial photographer, was commissioned by Sports Illustrated to do a story about a young boxer named Nick Biondi. The two struck up a friendship and stayed in touch until Winogrand moved away from New York in 1971.

When SFMOMA and the National Gallery announced plans to organize a retrospective... More

Lebbeus Woods, Architect is on view at SFMOMA till June 2. Open Space is pleased to be hosting a series of posts on Woods’s work and legacy. We close the series with a heartfelt missive from the University of Illinois library to Lebbeus Woods, discovered in the university’s archives by Daryl McCurdy, architecture and design department assistant... More

SFMOMA closes twenty days from now and the museum is rolling out four days of festivities to mark the event, including performances, free art viewing, and one of several 24-hour viewings of Christian Marclay’s epic masterpiece The Clock—twenty-four hours of collaged film fragments that reference the time of day or night, synchronized with local... More

Artists often cite one another as influences; it is easy enough to name what inspires or repels us, creatively. But the many-pronged relationships between people and objects, places and daily routine, labor and creativity—these are much more complex and harder to articulate.

—Jessica Brier, foreword to Episteme

Earlier this year two Bay Area ar... More

On Saturday, April 27, for SFMOMA’s Slow Art Day, I led a small but insightful group of viewers through the permanent collection, including parts of the Logan Collection that are currently on display in a show titled Don’t Be Shy, Don’t Hold Back. I’m an experienced art viewer, but the method of slowly looking in silence revealed things that surprised even me.

The premise for the day was to experience five pieces of art in uninterrupted silence for ten minutes apiece. However, I slightly augmented our proposed requirements by having our... More

From now until closing time on June 2 we are celebrating the unique and inspiring personal style of some of our gorgeous SFMOMA visitors. Follow the series.

What’s your name?

Monica S.

Where are you from?

Originally from Chile, just moved to San Francisco

What brings you to SFMOMA today?

I am a glass artist, came for inspiration.

Lebbeus Woods, Architect is on view at SFMOMA till June 2. Open Space is pleased to be hosting a series of posts on Woods’s work and legacy. Today, please welcome SFMOMA’s architecture and design department assistant Daryl McCurdy.

In 1960, a 20-year-old Lebbeus Woods arrived at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to pursue a master’s degree in architecture. Already a highly skilled draftsman, Woods began to offer his illustration skills to scholars for their academic papers. One of Woods’s clients was Dr. Heinz von Foerster... More

From now until closing time on June 2 we are celebrating the unique and inspiring personal style of some of our gorgeous SFMOMA visitors. Follow the series.

What’s your name?

[indecipherable but cute baby noises]

Eva’s mom: My name is Maralee B., and her name is Eva L., after Eva Hesse.

Where are you from?

[more indecipherable baby talk]

Eva’s mom: We live in the Mission in SF.

What brings you to SFMOMA today?

[Eva smiles]

Eva’s mom: Our SFMOMA trip was all about Eva. She played on the geometrical cushions in the... More

We are presenting daylong screenings of Al Wong’s Twin Peaks (1977) in SFMOMA’s Phyllis Wattis Theater on Free Tuesday, May 7. Over the course of a year the San Francisco native shot this contemplative journey, winding around the distinctive hills in the city. Twin Peaks was featured at SFMOMA in a spotlight screening of his work in 197... More

Lebbeus Woods, Architect is on view at SFMOMA till June 2. Open Space is pleased to be hosting a series of posts on Woods’s work and legacy. Today, please welcome SFMOMA’s Assistant Curator of Architecture and design Jennifer Dunlop-Fletcher.

Lebbeus Woods and Conceptual Architecture, New York, 1970–85

In a 1971 essay, architect Peter Eisenman asked if conceptual architecture was possible. Eisenman was the founding director of the Institute of Architecture and Urban Studies (IAUS), a small New York nonprofit organization that led the dis... More

In celebration of Slow Art Day, we invited four special guests to commandeer SFMOMA’s Twitter account for 30 minutes of live tweeting from the galleries. Artist, writer, theorist Tina Takemoto closed out our week with a slow close look at Glenn Ligon’s White #13. Check out the rest of our hijack transcripts here.

In celebration of Slow Art Day, we’ve invited four special guests to commandeer SFMOMA’s Twitter account for 30 minutes of live tweeting from the galleries. This afternoon’s team of hijackers: Will Brown, a collaborative project based in a storefront space in San Francisco’s Mission district. Will Brown is Lindsey White, Jordan Stein, and David Kasprzak. Their slow-looking session on Francis Picabia’s L’Homme aux gants (Man with Gloves) included responses from visitors in the gallery, as well as from an open call o... More

In celebration of Slow Art Day, we’ve invited four special guests to commandeer SFMOMA’s Twitter account for 30 minutes of live tweeting from the galleries. Here’s the transcript from yesterday’s hijacker — the legendary Guillermo Gómez Peña.

In celebration of Slow Art Day, we’ve invited four special guests to commandeer SFMOMA’s Twitter account for 30 minutes of live tweeting from the galleries. Yesterday artist Gay Outlaw took the reins to talk about Trisha Donnelly — enjoy the transcript!

Lebbeus Woods, Architect is on view at SFMOMA till June 2. Open Space is pleased to be hosting a series of posts on Woods’s work and legacy. Today, please welcome architect Dwayne Oyler.

Words Unspoken

Over the last few months, it’s been astounding to hear of Lebbeus’s vast influence, sometimes from the most unexpected people. Countle... More

Some museum staff were recently relocated to new office digs in preparation for our big expansion. Working late one night and perhaps under the influence of too much fluorescent lighting, I took it upon myself to repurpose this prime office real estate. You know what they say, when life gives you some drab, recently vacated office space, make some ... More

Duane Deterville is one of our three art-and-conversation hosts for SLOW ART DAY, April 27.

I oftentimes look at artwork that seems to evoke a sound. Music, dialogue, or other implied sounds. A few pieces that I’ve viewed at SFMOMA over the last few years that play sounds in my head are David Hammons’s Basketball Drawing, James Weeks’s Two Musicians, and Raymond Saunders’s piece titled Bird/Charlie Parker. Bouncing a basketball on the street and subsequently bouncing the same basketball on a large sheet of paper was t... More

Social media has as ubiquitous a presence in the galleries of museums as it does anywhere — come to SFMOMA on any given day and you’ll see people smiling for Facebook pics next to iconic artworks, while others stand still, compulsively tweeting their every thought. In a world of quick status updates and Instagram posts, is it possible to put the brakes on the accelerating, careening car that is social media and get people to really think?

In collaboration with the people over at Slow Art Day, we’re running a set of slow-looking expe... More

From now until closing time on June 2 we are celebrating the unique and inspiring personal style of some of our gorgeous SFMOMA visitors. Follow the series.

What are your names?

Iman H. and Briana B.

Where are you from?

Both from Berkeley

What brings you to SFMOMA today?

Research for a school project

More great looks.

Tess Thackara is one of our three art-and-conversation hosts for SLOW ART DAY, April 27.

Wandering through the Garry Winogrand exhibit last week, I lingered on several photos longer than the rest because they seemed to give fragments of rich, unresolved narratives; because I could place myself squarely within them, whether in terms of reality or a... More

Lebbeus Woods, Architect is on view at SFMOMA till June 2. Open Space is pleased to be hosting a series of posts on Woods’s work and legacy. Today, please welcome artist Kiki Smith.

I think Lebbeus and I were an eccentric combination. I played the straight man, grounding both works that we made — Skypool in Lapland, Finland, as well as our piec... More

Open Space turned 5 today. And what a fantastic 5 years it’s been, thanks to the more than 400 people who have written, produced, or talked something into being with us, including our 45 columnists, 5 guest editors, and 3 developers; along with countless designers, interns, staff, and helpers of all kinds; and the more than 1 million people w... More

Artist Emily Jain Wilson is one of our three art-and-conversation hosts for SLOW ART DAY, April 27.

In his anecdote “That Bowling Alley on the Tiber” from the collection of the same name, Michelangelo Antonioni reveals, “When I don’t know what to do, I start looking at things.” Master of the long, slow gaze, Antonioni ... More