Founded in 1935, SFMOMA collects modern and contemporary work by artists from around the world. The collection of more than thirty thousand artworks include four major categories: architecture and design, media arts, painting and sculpture, and photography.
SFMOMA has deep holdings of work by individual artists across their careers, particularly in the Painting and Sculpture collection and the Museum is also dedicated to supporting and collecting the work of California artists, especially those active in the Bay Area.
In addition to extensive gallery space, there is a glass pavilion and two open-air spaces featuring a rotating selection of indoor and outdoor sculpture from the museum’s permanent collection.
This retrospective publication, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art: 75 Years of Looking Forward (2010), celebrates 75 years of SFMOMA's collecting, and includes more than 300 large-scale plates and 50 text entries on individual works.
Exhibitions & Dates
New Work: Etel Adnan
Sep 1 2018 - Jan 6 2019
Visual artist, poet and essayist presents recent works of paintings and tapestries
Louis Stettner Traveling Light
Oct 27 2018 - May 27 2019
Thematic retrospective displays the breadth of an eight-decade career
Johannes Brus New to the Collection
Oct 27 2018 - May 27 2019
Photographic works and sculpture illuminate the breadth of the artist's work
Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World
Nov 10 2018 - Feb 24 2019
150 works of experimental art by 70+ contemporary artists and collectives
Brassaï
Nov 17 2018 - Feb 18 2019
Prints of the artist’s enigmatic images of Parisian life
Vija Celmins: To Fix the Image in Memory
Dec 15 2018 - Mar 31 2019
140 small-scale artworks of renderings of the physical world
Paul Klee and the Prinzhorn Collection
Sep 15 2018 - Mar 10 2019
Art by the mentally Ill alongside works by the 3 modernists
The Sea Ranch: Architecture, Environment, and Idealism
Dec 22 2018 - Apr 28 2019
Original sketches and archival images alongside images of the ranch today
Wayne Thiebaud: Artist’s Choice
Sep 29 2018 - Mar 10 2019
50 years of Thiebold's works alongside paintins by old friends and new discoveries
Alexander Calder: Scaling Up
Oct 21 2017 - Jan 13 2019
A close look at the small-scale beginnings of his most sizable works
Louise Bourgeois Spiders
Oct 7 2017 - Jul 14 2019
Works in a range of materials and scale
snap+share: transmitting photographs from mail art to social networks
Mar 30 2019 - Aug 4 2019
Works include framed paper-based art and immersive installations
Suzanne Lacy: We Are Here
Apr 20 2019 - Aug 4 2019
Explore her entire career, from feminist work to her latest immersive video installations