The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art announced its inaugural exhibitions Wednesday, including plans to feature 260 works from the recently acquired Fisher Collection and 600 other newly promised artworks.
The museum is undergoing a massive $305 million renovation with a remodel of the 1995 Mario Botta building on 3rd Street, plus a new wing, both designed by the firm Snøhetta. SFMOMA is scheduled to reopen May 14 with three times its previous gallery space.
One of the drivers for the expansion was the gift (really a 99-year-loan) of 260 works from the Doris and Donald Fisher Collection. (Yes, that’s Doris and Donald Fisher, the founders of The Gap clothing stores.)
That collection is strong on work by American abstract, pop, and figurative artists, as well as German art made after the 1960s. Plus works by Alexander Calder, including some of his famous mobiles. The opening exhibits will examine aspects of the collection on three floors of the new facility.
The museum’s Pritzker Center for Photography will now occupy the nation’s largest space devoted to the exhibition and study of photography, and open with an exhibit illustrating “photography’s complex and ever-changing relationship with time.”
