Shutting down a major museum for three years of expansion may seem like suicide, but the newly reborn San Francisco Museum of Modern Art proves it can be a great success. SFMOMA reopened to the public on May 14, preceded by several weeks of well-orchestrated previews and parties. The new 10-story wing designed by Snøhetta is brilliant, both outside and in. The white siding of undulating “waves”...
In San Francisco’s downtown gallery district, one building, 49 Geary Street, once held the greatest concentration of the best galleries—over 20 on five floors. With Gallery Paule Anglim across the street at 14 Geary, and a half-dozen more at 77 Geary just down the street, this one block had anchored the whole SF gallery scene. As tech boomed, Bay Area real estate became red hot. For artists and...
Not content with a refurbished building that makes them the largest contemporary art museum in America, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is courting patrons with interactive technology that enhances and even transforms the viewing experience.Visitors are invited to navigate the vast 170,000 square feet of indoor/outdoor exhibition space via a new iOS app (also available on Android in phase...
Hauser & Wirth have galleries in Zurich, London, New York and now Los Angeles, but in rural Somerset, England, Iwan and Manuela Wirth have created a mini-Eden in which they bring all their interests together: art and architecture, conservation and food, community and family. They’ve already had some notable exhibitions by the likes of Phyllida Barlow and Jenny Holzer. A love affair rather...
By way of a smallish retrospective at the New Museum titled “Al-ugh-ories,” and a major exhibition of new paintings at Anton Kern Gallery “Magnificent Delusion,” Nicole Eisenman has lately given New York audiences a lot to look at. One of the intriguing things about her paintings is that their anecdotal specificity opens up the interpretive possibilities, rather than delimiting them. Whether...
Nancy Youdelman’s Button Dress from 1972 hangs in the window of a nondescript gallery on Fountain Avenue. The garment represents early feminist strategies that confronted and subverted domestic roles and “feminine” mediums traditionally prescribed to women and labeled...
LA-based painter Tidawhitney Lek’s first solo show “House Hold” at Sow & Tailor comprises 10 paintings and two sculptures, examining the personal dichotomies experienced by living in contemporary LA while concurrently being “held” by familial trauma—particularly,...
“Laurie Anderson: The Weather” at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is the largest US exhibition of Anderson’s work to date. At 74, Anderson continues to be immensely creative as multimedia artist, performer, musician and writer—the show includes more than a...
The landmark exhibition “No Humans Involved” was remarkably compact, filling a single gallery at the Hammer with installations by only seven artists. Its impact, however, was seismic and sustained. Its title alone was enough to take viewers aback—and that was part of...
After remaining indoors for over a year, it’s refreshing to be confronted with the idea of the natural passage of time in the outside world—how life consciously accumulates and mutates, even when we aren’t there to watch it happen. Mary Brøgger’s retrospective...