Our regular feature Collection Rotation. Each month a guest organizes a mini “exhibition” from our collection works online. Today, please welcome local comedian George Chen, who will be performing this Thursday night at SFMOMA, in the program A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Museum, 7pm in the Koret Visitor Education Center.

A lot of a... More

Our regular feature Collection Rotation. Each month a guest organizes a mini “exhibition” from our collection works online. Today, please welcome filmmaker Kerry Laitala.

This work evokes a sphinx-like enigma through its closed zipper eyes. I really wanted to touch the zippers and open them to reveal an interior world. The constellation-like pa... More

Our regular feature Collection Rotation. Each month a guest organizes a mini “exhibition” from our collection works online. Today, please welcome artist Jason Fulford.

Here is a proposal for a group show — one room, 13 pieces. The room should have a door, hand-painted with the title of the show: November Pictures. Headphones are avail... More

Our regular feature Collection Rotation. Each month someone special organizes a mini “exhibition” from our collection works online. Today, please welcome SFMOMA’s Anne Bast Davis.

Orphans in the Museum

Once, in my past position as intellectual property associate at SFMOMA, I received a request from a writer who wanted to reproduce a work by Tina Modotti, the Italian-born photographer-turned-communist-revolutionary who worked closely with Edward Weston (and whose photographs of Mexico were featured in a recent SFMOMA exhibition... More

The return of our regular feature Collection Rotation! Each month someone special organizes a mini exhibition from our collection works online. Today, please welcome (back) writer and rock ‘n’ roll star Tammy Fortin.

Last month I relocated from San Francisco to Lansing, Michigan, for my wife’s job. While she was at work every day, I myself, being unemployed and highly organized, began the slow process of unpacking and putting things away. I started with, arguably, the most important objects in any home, the books. I emptied th... More

Our regular feature Collection Rotation. Each month someone special organizes a mini “exhibition” from our collection works online. Today, please welcome artist and writer Jaime Cortez.

“A thing with feathers”

To curate this online show, I sifted through images on Artscope, SFMOMA’s interactive art-browsing tool. It is qui... More

Our regular feature, Collection Rotation. Each month someone special organizes a mini “exhibition” from our collection works online. Today, please welcome writer and editor Anne Ray.

For a variety of reasons — the holiday season, the state of the world, the recent arrival of my third child — I currently find myself drawn to works th... More

Our regular feature, Collection Rotation. Each month we invite someone to organize a mini-“exhibition” from our collection works online. Today, please welcome artist and critic Bruno Fazzolari.

A Collection Rotation–style post, from one of our curators who really does rotate the collection. Please welcome Assistant Curator of Photography Erin O’Toole.

Soon after the invention of the daguerreotype was announced in 1839, Paris was overtaken by a fever for photography dubbed “daguerreotypomania.” Made the following year, this well-known lithograph (above) illustrates the excitement with which the new technology was immediately embraced. Seemingly everybody was taking pictures of everything from every mode of modern transporta... More

Our regular feature, Collection Rotation. Each month I invite someone to organize a mini-“exhibition” from our collection works online. Today, please welcome artist Gina Osterloh.

(I was not able to see this installation — part of Project, Transform, Erase — but I imagine there are similarities to Line Describing a Cone, which I experienced in Frankfurt. As one enters the room there is uncertainty about what one sees, what one perceives. There is a collapse of two- and three-dimensionality, physicality, the ephemeral, and optics. Famil... More

The SFMOMA “summer of Stein” comes to an end this evening, when we say farewell to The Steins Collect, closing today. In this second of his two Collection Rotation–style summer posts, loosely adjacent to the exhibition, Steve Evans offers a Steinian twist on SFMOMA’s collection. (Steve’s first post is here.) Enjoy!

For thi... More

A twist on our regular feature Collection Rotation. Steve Evans selects from the exhibition The Steins Collect, and issues an invitation to reading and listening to Gertrude Stein. Enjoy!

“By whose invitation do you come?” was the formula with which Gertrude Stein habitually greeted the visitors who arrived, in ever-increasing numbers, at her atelier at 27 rue de Fleurus, curious to make her acquaintance and to look at the paintings that she and her brother Leo were, with unparalleled daring, in the process of collecting, the very ones so b... More

Our regular feature, Collection Rotation. Every month or so I invite someone to organize a mini-“exhibition” from our collection works online. Today, please welcome SFMOMA trustee David Mahoney.

Busted Flush

I was thrilled to be asked to create one of these collection rotations, as I have had the opportunity over the past fifteen years to watch... More

Our regular feature, Collection Rotation. Every month or so I invite someone to organize a mini-“exhibition” from our collection works online. Today, please welcome writer, curator, and former Open Space columnist ADRIENNE SKYE ROBERTS. ]

Each day my father conducts conversations in anticipation of death. In August of last year he began working... More

Our regular feature, Collection Rotation. Every month or so I invite someone to organize a mini-“exhibition” from our collection works online. Today, please welcome visual and sound artist WAYNE SMITH. And Happy Valentine’s Day!]

The invitation to do the Collection Rotation came at a time when I was organizing some field recordings I̵... More

[Our regular feature, Collection Rotation. Each month a guest organizes a mini-“exhibition” from our collection works online. Maria Naula works in SFMOMA’s Accessions Department supervising the acquisitions process, and it's possible she knows the collection, at least as it's grown over the last decade, more comprehensively than anyone on staff... 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 artist and curator Margaret Tedesco.]

BETWEEN TWO

For Remy Charlip, his AIR MAIL DANCES, and for Jill Johnston (1929–2010)

I am a thief and I’m not ashamed. I steal from the best wh... 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

Our regular feature, Collection Rotation. Every month, I invite a guest to organize a mini-exhibition from our collection works online. Please welcome artist, filmmaker, and founder of Mr. Lady Records, Tammy Rae Carland. Superb.

http://media.sas.upenn.edu/pennsound/authors/Stein/1935/Stein-Gertrude_If-I-Told-Him.mp3

http://www.newmedia-art.org/cgi-bin/show-oeu.asp?ID=150000000036249&lg=GBR

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Our regular feature, Collection Rotation. Every month, I invite a guest to organize a mini-exhibition from our collection works online. Please welcome poet and artist Yedda Morrison. [NB: click images for larger view. Lovely.] Thanks, Yedda!

A biocentric readingof SFMOMA’S permanent collection; or foraging for sub-narratives within the aesthetic ... More

[This month's Collection Rotation is from our very own Megan Brian, Education & Public Programs Coordinator and frequent Open Space contributor, albeit in the service of making other stars shine (Five Questions, Flickr pic of the week).  Rather than selecting a group of works from SFMOMA's permanent collection, Megan turned to the museum's staff.... More

Our regular feature, Collection Rotation. Every month I invite someone to organize a mini-exhibition from our collection works online. Today’s guest is Bay Area artist Jessica Tully, whose work has included underwater performance, site-specific synchronized Bobcat Skid-steer Loader ballet, and many other fantastic things. Welcome, Jessica!

Water, Women and Power: Digging in the SFMOMA Crates with Jessica Tully

Ten years ago, I found myself relearning to walk after a bicycle accident. I did this in water: the mysterious gravity-defying ele... More

Our regular feature, Collection Rotation. Every month I invite someone to organize a mini-exhibition from our collection works online. Today’s guest is our resident  pastry genius, Caitlin Freeman, who invents the many beautiful, delicious, and humorous sweet takes on SFMOMA artworks for the Blue Bottle cafe upstairs. Welcome, Caitlin!

From Art to Cake to Art

It all started with this painting:

It was the mid-1990′s and I was a photography student at UC Santa Cruz. As part of the curriculum, we would take day trips to San Francisc... More

At last, the return of Collection Rotation. In this monthly feature, I invite someone to organize a mini-exhibition from our collection works online.  Please welcome today’s guest, the poet Allyssa Wolf.Unless otherwise noted, text excerpts below are from Guy Debord’s Critique of Separation. Audio files courtesy the good folks at PennS... More

Our monthly feature, Collection Rotation: some wonderful guest organizes a mini-exhibition from our collection works online. This month’s guest-curator is the totally marvelous San Francisco artist and filmmaker ANNE MCGUIRE. You can see some of her work in JIGSAMENTALLAMA, on through 12/19, at David Cunningham Projects. Thanks Anne!

_________... More

[Our monthly feature, Collection Rotation: some wonderful guest organizes a mini-exhibition from our collection works online. This month's guest-curator is the marvelous Fayette Hauser, shining, beautiful Cockette, costume designer, & collector extraordinaire. On December 3, we're hosting the Cockettes for a rare film screening and celebration of... More

This afternoon, SFMOMA is hosting a special memorial service honoring Bay Area sculptor and conceptual artist David Ireland, who passed away last spring. Ireland was a central figure in conceptual art in the Bay Area and beyond. From the 1970s until his death, he produced a highly idiosyncratic body of work concerned with the creation and function... More

Our monthly feature, Collection Rotation: some wonderful guest organizes a mini-exhibition from our collection works online. This month’s guest-curator is is SFMOMA’s very own Jefre Cantu, musician in life, and long-time operations tech and resident yoga instructor by SFMOMA day. Thanks Jefre!

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Our monthly feature, Collection Rotation: some wonderful guest organizes a mini-exhibition from our collection works online. This month’s guest-curator is the artist Mads Lynnerup, whose work is included in the current Media Arts exhibition The Studio Sessions. Mads lived and worked in the Bay Area for several years, now he’s moved on to even more urban pastures. Thanks Mads!
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Untitled
After exploring the permanent collection of SFMOMA both in person and virtually I became curious about the number of artworks in the collection which are “untitled.” While accumulating all of the “untitled” works from SFMOMA’s website, which lists many of the permanent collection online, I started thinking about why so many artworks end up without a title. ... More