Well, the wait is finally over! Open since May, the newly remodeled SFMOMA by Snøhetta architects oozes cool California perfection. My favorite time to visit new beginnings of old institutions is when the first buzz begins to fade. This is the best moment to invade for visual inspiration and investigation.
Last year, I peered on a rooftop adjunct to the museum’s new construction imagining what new artworks would find San Francisco to be home. Today, visitors are able to continue to see a world-class collection conveniently and confidently. The decision was made to start at the 7th floor and work back down. From heaven to reality, the plan worked just fine.
Brad Kahlhamer’s Super Catcher made of wire and bells engaged even though missing its activation time. The supersized dreamcatcher is inspired by urban culture and personal mythologies. Meanwhile, Andy Warhol investigates celebrity from the inside and out. When dream becomes reality, the artist is born.
A portrait by Chuck Close of artist Agnes Martin captures the female gaze. No 18th-century French Rococo paintings of naked women draped on furniture with bare derrières in the air. Close’s perspective works for me.
Wow. SFMOMA does Minimalism right. Sol LeWitt and Ellsworth Kelly are allowed to breath without clutter. From the museum’s wall text regarding LeWitt’s Drawing 273: “Wall Drawing 272 will be painted over when this exhibition ends, but it will continue to exist through the set of instructions LeWitt devised for its creation. Despite their precision, these guidelines, like those for many of the artist’s Wall Drawings, are remarkably open to variability…”
The museum boosts of Media Arts galleries, New Painting & Sculpture Galleries, Sculpture Gardens, Center for Photography, Education Center, restaurants, and stores. Every inch and space was carefully planned and executed. To find this extravagant artistic air and commons was a welcome surprise.
The red woman’s bathroom reminded me of Olafur Eliasson’s Nothingness is not nothing at all exhibit at the Long Museum in Shanghai. An artist and a museum using color to manipulate environment by questioning a sense of place. Thank you SFMOMA for that extra spice.
Welcome back.
The links:
http://future.sfmoma.org/#home
http://www.sfmoma.org/about/our_expansion/expansion_project_faq
http://www.sfmoma.org/about/our_expansion/expansion_architects_partners
http://www.archdaily.com/office/snohetta
http://thelongmuseum.org/en/exhibition/overview/d81dwA
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