Friday/ San Francisco’s MoMA

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art reopened in May of this year after a major three-year-long expansion project.   And so when I miraculously found a two-hour break in my workday meeting schedule on Monday, I walked down to 3rd Avenue and Mission, and took a quick romp through the museum.  1 ½ hrs of time is not nearly enough for seven floors of art – but there is only so much one can take in at any one time, then one has to call it a visit and come back later (which does not apply only to museums, right?).

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Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle.   The new Museum inside and out, was designed by architecture firm Snøhetta from Oslo, Norway.  
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The main entrance lobby is a tall open space with stairs up to the ticket counter ($25 for a visit) and a restaurant and coffee shop. 
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This quintessential older ‘California dude’ was in the middle of one of the exhibition rooms and I could not find a plaque for it with the artist’s name.
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Here’s Henri Matisse’s Femme au Chapeau (Woman with a Hat), 1905. It caused quite a stir, a scandal some would say, in the art world back then. To the question ‘What color dress was she wearing?’ the artist reportedly replied ‘black, of course’.
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I did not make a note of this holographic work of art – it was kind of hard to see what was depicted, so I shamelessly exploited the mirror-like surface of the artwork for a selfie.
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This is a shocking and I would say, controversial photo collage (I could not get rid of my reflection in it) from Japanese artist Tsunehisa Kimera, called Americanism (1982). It suggests the couple/ Americans enjoying their Coca-Cola are at least somewhat oblivious to the cost of nuclear war.
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American artist Martin Puryear’s 1990 work of art is called ‘Untitled’ (of course), and made from wire mesh, tar and Douglas fir.
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So here we are, the inevitable display in a museum with modern art that makes you scratch your head and say ‘and this is ART?’. Or maybe the observer has to figure out what blue – then green, then black, then red, means.
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This is American artist Roy Lichtenstein’s Figures with Sunset (1978). It borrows Surrealist imagery from artists such as Salvador Dali and Pablo Picasso.
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One of several ‘mobiles’ (sometimes called ‘kinetic art’) constructed to take advantage of the principle of equilibrium. I was tempted to reach over and touch it. No touchie!
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This is a view out of the museum’s 3rd floor towards the 181 Fremont tower that is under construction.
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Some outdoor art on the 4th floor, I think.
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This is ‘Apple Core’ by artists Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen.

 

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