ConciergeSAN FRANCISCOSAN FRANCISCO FALL/WINTER

2016/17

Innovative

ARTSEE WHAT’S NEW AT

THE EXPANDED SFMOMA

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ARTFUL ENDEAVORSInside the recently expanded SFMOMA, contemporary design, modern art and digital advancements create a world-class museum experience. BY TIFFANIE WEN

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For three years, the Bay Area was without its beloved San Francisco

Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA). Though the museum launched a schedule of off-site programs around the city, the Third Street hub was undergoing an extensive renovation and expansion totaling $305 million in con-struction costs alone. The result was well worth the wait and resources—in May the com-pletely revamped, environmen-tally friendly museum opened to the public with an additional 10-floor extension as well as three times more gallery space, including a free ground floor exhibition, and has set what The New York Times called a new standard for museums around the world.

But critics aren’t just praising the architectural changes and its effect on the city’s South of Market Street area, known as SoMa. In conjunction with the reno-vation, SFMOMA launched its commissioning program with site-specific artwork, including an inaugural exhi-bition of a textile mural by Dutch artist Claudy Jongstra, and has an advanced digital strategy, including an innova-tive museum app developed with local company Detour, that provides podcast-quality, location-specific audio tours. With 45,000 square feet of free, art-filled public space and free admission for visitors 18 and under, the museum is also hoping to enhance the community in which it resides. “We want the new SFMOMA to be a true com-munity resource,” says Neal Benezra, who has been direc-tor of SFMOMA since 2002. “These are a few of many ways we hope to serve a broader audience, claim our role as cultural hub in the center of

this great city and inspire a new generation with meaning-ful art experiences.”

AN ARCHITECTURAL GEMThis wasn’t the first big change for SFMOMA, which was originally called the San Francisco Museum of Art when it was established in 1935. At its inception, the museum displayed an original collection, including art by famed Mexican painters Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, on the fourth floor of the War Memorial Veterans Building, across from San Francisco City Hall. In 1995, the collection was moved to the new Third Street building, which was designed by Swiss architect Mario Botta.

Today, the museum blends seamlessly with Botta’s design, but takes into account the drastic transformation of SoMa of the last two decades and prioritizes sustainability. Designed by Snøhetta, an award-winning interna-tional architectural firm, the expanded museum is on track to receive Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Gold certification,

with a 46 percent reduction in energy use and 60 percent decrease in potable water use.

“With the transformation of the neighborhood into a lively pedestrian and com-mercial zone, the SFMOMA expansion had the chance to truly realize the museum’s mission of increased public engagement,” says project architect Jon McNeal. “This is most prominent in the new Roberts Family Gallery, where floor-to-ceiling windows allow people along Howard Street

to view the artwork from the sidewalk or vehicles. This gallery is free to the public and opens an hour before the rest of the building, making art more visible and accessible to the public than was possible in the original building. This new transparency is a reflec-tion of how the neighborhood has changed since the original SFMOMA building opened.”

The facade of the expansion welcomes visitors with 700 uniquely shaped fiberglass-re-inforced polymer (FRP)

Clockwise from top left: SFMOMA features the largest public living wall in the U.S.; Alexander Calder’s “Untitled” hangs in the museum’s atrium; the expansion’s facade features 700 uniquely shaped panels.

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plants supported by a recycled water system.

But perhaps the most impressive design element of the expansion is the new sculptural staircase that goes from the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Atrium to the second floor. Project manager Lara Kaufman says it is her favorite architectural component of the whole project. “To make the most of SFMOMA’s unique urban site and gallery arrangement, we made the stairs into something more than just purely functional,” she says. “The stairs along the City Gallery hug the inner wall of the facade and provide a complementary experience to viewing artwork in the gal-leries. Walking along the stairs is a treat, energizing the mind and feet on the way to the next exhibit, acting as a kind of palate cleanser.”

WORLD-CLASS WORKSWith 170,000 square feet of exhibition space, SFMOMA is able to display additional pieces from its growing col-lection of more than 33,000 works of art. Doris and Donald Fisher, the founders of San Francisco-based Gap Inc., have partnered with the museum since the 1980s to display selections from their collection of over 1,100 works by 185 major American and European artists of the 20th and 21st centuries, including works by Agnes Martin, Gerhard Richter and Andy Warhol. The new Fisher Collection galleries encompass a whopping 60,000 square feet of space across three floors. Inaugural exhibitions in the Fisher Galleries include “Pop, Minimal and Figurative Art: The Fisher Collection” and “German Art after 1960: The Fisher Collection.”

“We’re excited to serve as

panels, the design of which evolved by observing the site and San Francisco more gen-erally. “The facade is evocative of the natural processes of the Bay Area, visually embodying the ephemera of sunlight, fog, wind and water,” McNeal says. “Its distinctive, rippled geom-etry is dynamic in all types of light, and its cantilevered and double-curved form maxi-mizes daylight and clear space in the public realm at ground level. This increased daylight access combines with a new public pedestrian circulation pathway and a highly trans-parent facade to beckon and

welcome visitors to the expan-sion.” Since FRP is also a lightweight material, it allows for fewer structural columns and braces inside the building, leading to more flexible and open gallery spaces.

Those gallery spaces are plentiful. All employ sus-tainable LED lighting, and include additional spaces for performance and film. For example, the Gina and Stuart Peterson White Box and the Phyllis Wattis Theater pro-vide double-height spaces for performances and events. The fourth floor is also home to a new 1,100-square-foot space

dedicated to exhibiting emerg-ing artists, while the two-story, 4,200-square-foot Elise S. Haas Conservation Studio is dedicated to art conservation and provides a studio space for artists. Two galleries on the seventh floor feature 4,400 square feet of space dedicated to media arts, and 3,500 more square feet on floors three and six are dedicated to architec-ture and design.

Outside, there are six ter-races that feature installations and sculpture, including the largest public living wall in the United States, which fea-tures over 19,000 green living

Top: Roberts Family Gallery featuring Richard Serra’s Sequence (2006) at SFMOMA; bottom: “California and the West: Photography” from the Campaign for Art exhibition

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Refuel After SFMOMAFrom In Situ, created by three-Michelin-starred chef Corey Lee, to the more casual Cafe 5, which offers Californian cuisine, and the Sightglass coffee house, there are plenty of dining options in the museum. But those look-ing to venture out should consider some of these nearby favorites.

Grill Located just across from the museum inside the The St. Regis San Francisco, Grill offers new American cuisine for lunch. Or for a quick drink, head to the chic lobby for cocktails. (125 Third St.; 415-284-4188; stregissanfrancisco.com)

Yank SingLess than a 10-minute walk from the museum is Yank Sing, which is known for having some of the best dim sum in the city. (49 Stevenson St.; 415-541-4949; yanksing.com)

Ristorante UmbriaThis popular cafe serves traditional dishes from the Umbria region of Italy for lunch and dinner. (198 Second St; 415-546-6985; umbriasf.com)

Amber IndiaAmber India is known in the Bay Area for high-quality Indian. If you can’t choose among the long list of dishes, go for the lunch buffet and try it all. (25 Yerba Buena Lane; 415-777-0500; amber-india.com)

a model for public-private partnerships with our ground-breaking Fisher Collection partnership,” Benezra says. “There needed to be a third way for a great museum to work with a great collector, and I think we found it.” He says the Ellsworth Kelly galleries and Agnes Martin gallery in “Approaching American Abstraction: The Fisher Collection” on the fourth floor are among the highlights of the new museum. Pieces include works from Kelly’s Paris period, including “Cité” (1951) and “Spectrum I” (1953).

SFMOMA was one of the first American museums to recognize photography as an art form and today the institution carries on its commitment to the expression. With more than 17,000 photographic works in its collection, it’s no surprise that the museum dedicated ample space to the medium in its expansion design. Located on the third floor, The Pritzker Center for Photography is the largest permanent space ded-icated to photography in the United States.

“We are gratified to be one of the world’s leading postwar and contemporary art museums, continually trying to raise the bar with our work with emerging artists, our use of technology, and new commissioning programs and performance residencies,” Benezra says.

SFMOMA IN THE DIGITAL AGEFirmly situated in what is widely considered the most important startup hub in the world, SFMOMA has embraced the digital age. The old lecture-style audio tours have been replaced by a sophisticated, modern museum app. Created in part-nership with San Francisco startup Detour, which creates podcast quality, GPS-driven guided walks in city neighbor-hoods, the SFMOMA tours are diverse and interactive, and in some cases, narrated by famous voices like the stars of HBO’s “Silicon Valley.”

Andrew Mason, the founder of Detour, says the indoor positioning sys-tem uses Wi-Fi routers to

triangulate and track users’ positions and present them with relevant information. “It can update the phone based on the room and the artwork that’s around you and makes the experience of interacting with the artwork effortless,” he says. “Little things about the way that smartphones have evolved have opened up the way people interact with things immensely.”

The app even allows groups to take a tour together, with the narration synced among users. There is also a simpler setting option that allows you to get information about specific works in your immediate vicinity.

The large number of shorter tours—some funny, others more serious—give visitors the advantage of choosing tours based on their interests and approach to art. “There [are] a variety of contexts in which people arrive at the museum,” Mason says. “Everyone has a different relationship with art—some are bought in, oth-ers are more skeptical. These tours provide different things for different people.” C

“Pop, Minimal and Figurative Art: The Fisher Collection” exhibition

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