SFMOMA – Welcoming an old friend back to the City

Welcome back / The new-look SFMOMA has grown from five to 10 stories.

Last Thursday evening, my wife and I welcomed an old friend back to San Francisco. The San Francisco Museum of Modern ART (SFMOMA) reopened earlier this month after being closed for the past three years while undergoing a massive – and challenging – expansion project by Oslo and New York design firm Snøhetta. The new-look SFMOMA has grown from five to 10 stories. Dropping in on the newly transformed museum after work for a short visit before heading out for dinner and shopping, we delighted in seeing some favorite artworks and architectural features – including some of the gems from the Doris and Donald Fisher Collection, considered to be one of the world's greatest.

The largest living wall in the U.S. greets visitors to SFMOMA.

From first glimpse, there's much to like about the new look and space of SFMOMA, including new galleries, expanded exhibition space, better lighting, greater access, art-filled public spaces, six terraces and sculptural staircases, which offer unique views out to the city.

As visitors step outside onto the main terrace, they are greeted by a giant living wall designed by Habitat Horticulture. It is part art, part landscape and it's the nation's largest public green wall of native plants.

Constellation  (1949) / From Alexander Calder: Motion Lab

We delighted in seeing the Alexander Calder: Motion Lab, which highlights Calder's restless innovation in bringing actual movement into art. We viewed About Time: Photography in a Moment of Change, a thematic exhibition which investigates how photography has profoundly reflected, inflected and transformed our perception of time through its 180-year history. We also saw Model Behavior, Snøhetta's initial sketches and models for the expanded SFMOMA building, located in a challenging and prominent urban site on Third Street, just south of Market Street.

A swarm of chaotic energy /
Studying Antony Gormley's "Quantum Cloud VIII"

Finally, upon ascending to Floor 5, we admired British Sculptors, in which more than forty years of diverse sculpture by artists who were born or reside in Great Britain was displayed.

My favorite was Antony Gormley's "Quantum Cloud VIII," a 1999 steel sculpture that was acquired by the Fisher Family in 2000. According to the sculptor, "Quantum Cloud VIII conceives of the body as a swarm of chaotic energy. A human figure seems to alternately materialize from and disintegrate into the cloud of metal bars."

Created between 1999 and 2009, Gormley's Quantum Cloud series reflects on "how the subatomic particles and energy that make up our bodies are integrated with those that compose the universe around us."

Alexander Calder /
Big Crinkly (1969)

There is much to see and enjoy in the 170,000 square feet of exhibition space, and as members, we look forward to going back often to see some of the things we missed during our initial visit. Some of the current exhibits include:

• Paul Klee in Color, which includes paintings and watercolors by the Swiss-born modernist Paul Klee (1879-1940) that explore "his intuitive and theoretical approaches to color."

• German Art after 1960, which is an overview of leading German artists such as Gerhard Richter, Georg Baslitz, Anselm Kiefer, and Bernd and Hilla Becher.

• Typeface to Interface, which features graphic design from the Collection, "a trajectory of iconic type and the evolution of digital tools marking the rapid transformation of graphic design over the past sixty years."

San Francisco / A city that loves art and open spaces.

In its 81-year history, SFMOMA has established itself as a premier showcase for modern art – think Calder, Close, Kahlo, Kelly, Pollack and Warhol. One things certain: There's definitely a new a positive dedication to openness as the museum begins a new dialogue with San Francisco, a city that loves its art.

To read more about what art critics are saying about the new SFMOMA design:
http://www.dezeen.com/2016/05/18/critics-reaction-san-francisco-museum-modern-art-sfmoma-extension-snohetta-mario-botta/

Photos: All photos by Michael Dickens © 2016.

Botticelli to Braque: Highlighting the great and the familiar

Sandro Botticelli / The Virgin Adoring the Sleeping Christ 

Sandro Botticelli was one of the most celebrated artists of the Early Renaissance, which was known as a golden age of artistic painting in Italy. His 1485 masterpiece, "The Virgin Adoring the Sleeping Christ Child," welcomes museum-goers to the "Botticelli to Braque: Masterpieces from the National Galleries of Scotland" exhibition on display at the de Young Fine Arts Museum in San Francisco through the end of May. 

Sir Henry Raeburn /
Skating on Duddingston Loch.

The depth and breadth of "Botticelli to Braque" spans more than 400 years of artistic production and the 55 paintings shown in the red-walled Herbst Exhibition Galleries highlight works by many great and familiar painters from the Renaissance to the early 20th century. In addition to Botticelli, the collection includes masterpieces by Diego Velázquez, Johannes Vermer, Rembrandt van Rijn, Sir Henry Raeburn, Frederic Edwin Church, Claude Monet, Paul Gaugin, Georges Seurat, Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque.

The lender of these impressive works of art is the Scottish National Art Collection, which has linked three Edinburgh institutions that contributed to the show: the Scottish National Gallery, Scottish National Portrait Gallery and Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art.

There is always a lot to learn and absorb from seeing any art exhibition, and I became fascinated from the very beginning of "Botticelli to Braque" after viewing "The Virgin Adoring the Sleeping Christ Child". Afterwards, I researched Botticelli's tempera and learned this: The Italian painter drew inspiration from the work of Filippo Lippi, and it's unusual because he painted his masterpiece on canvas not wood and the Christ Child was rarely portrayed asleep.

"This variation could be interpreted as a reminder of Christ's death," according to nationalgalleries.org, the National Galleries of Scotland's website. "His future suffering for Mankind may also be symbolized by the detailed plants and fruits. The red strawberries, for example, may refer to Christ's blood. They also complement the beautiful rose bower which forms an 'enclosed garden', a symbol of the Virgin derived from the Old Testament Song of Solomon."

Johannes Vermeer / Christ in the House
of Martha and Mary.

Meanwhile, of the 36 paintings by the Dutch Master Johannes Vermeer that are known to still exist in the world, "Christ in the House of Martha and Mary" is the largest one and the only one that illustrates a biblical subject. Vermeer is one of my favorite artists and I looked forward to seeing his contribution to the "Botticelli to Braque" exhibition. After all, any Vermeer is worth seeing.

Vermeer (1632-1675), who was regarded as one of the greatest painters of the Dutch Golden Age, was known for painting quiet human interaction, and in "Christ in the House of Martha and Mary" (ca. 1654-1655), he depicts the story of Saint Luke's Gospel (10:38-42) that tells of Christ's visit to the sister's house.

According to nationalgalleries.org, "Christ praised Mary's willingness to sit and listen to his teachings, unlike Martha who was preoccupied with housekeeping. The strong play of shadow and light, the characterization of the figures and broad handling of paint were probably inspired by the work of artists from Utrecht, who in turn were influenced by Caravaggio's art."

Rembrandt van Rijn /
Self portrait, aged 51.

When the "Botticelli to Braque" exhibition opened in March, San Francisco Chronicle art critic Kenneth Baker wrote: "An art historian might plot many lines through the selection of paintings on view, tracing the secularization of subject matter, or the evolution of patronage. But the show's most entwining intellectual thread may be the very question of representational fidelity.

"Why, besides the clerical demand of compelling faith, did what we think of as realism matter so much that it brought forth prodigies of depiction such as Vermeer, Rembrandt and Diego Velazquez?"

Baker's conclusion: "Take any direction through "Botticelli to Braque" and prepare to be blindsided by artistic miracles."

Photos: Courtesy of nationalgalleries.org.