SFMOMA has reopened after a three-year transformation from the original Mario Botta-designed building to include a 10-story expansion, integrated seamlessly with the original and designed by the architecture firm Snøhetta. The architects took inspiration from San Francisco’s billowing fog in designing the museum exterior’s dramatic, rippled, white surface. Snøhetta is known for works including the Oslo Opera House, the Alexandria Library, and the entry pavilion of the National September 11 Memorial Museum in New York.

This expansion increases SFMOMA’s exhibit space to nearly three times what it was previously. The extra space allows the museum to showcase much more of its own exceptional holdings of more than 33,000 works, but also commences a partnership to show the Doris and Donald Fisher Collection, one of the world’s greatest private collections of postwar and contemporary art. In addition, the new Pritzker Center for Photography offers the largest exhibition and study space dedicated to photography in any art museum in the United States.

SFMOMA has opened with 19 special exhibitions. Amidst the seven stories of exhibit space, you can find galleries devoted to Gerhard Richter, William Kentridge, Agnes Martin, Alexander Calder, and many more. A few notable works that celebrate the expansion are: Richard Serra’s monumental walk-through sculpture Sequence; Claudy Jongstra’s textile mural Aarde; Sol LeWitt’s wall drawings that grace the interior with color; and Model Behavior, an exhibit of Snøhetta’s architectural models for the building.

The museum is open seven days a week. When you visit, in addition to taking in all the art, be sure to see the living wall composed of nearly 20,000 plants, and the various terraces that integrate the museum with nature and the surrounding cityscape.

Hours

Open daily 10 a.m.–5 p.m.

and Thursdays until 9 p.m.

www.sfmoma.org

Photos courtesy of Ellen Reilly

Sol LeWitt, Wall Drawing 895: Loopy Doopy (white and blue), 1999

George Segal, Chance Meeting, 1989. Bronze, aluminum and steel

SFMOMA exterior photo courtesy of SFMOMA