Snøhetta’s expansion to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art reimagines SFMOMA as a new art experience and gateway into the city of San Francisco. No longer an inward looking shrine to the art object, a museum today must engage with its local conditions and communities in a proactive way.
The new SFMOMA realizes in built form the museum’s goals of being a welcoming center for arts education and an important public space for the Bay area. The new expansion runs contiguously along the back of the existing Mario Botta-designed building which opened in 1995, allowing for a seamless integration of the two structures.
By doubling the amount of exhibition space and expanding the unticketed gallery areas and outdoor public spaces, the museum will be more accessible than ever when it re-opens on May 14, 2016. The expansion will also enliven the surrounding cityscape by opening up new routes of public circulation throughout the South of Market neighborhood and into the museum.
The new building enables SFMOMA to be more welcoming and better connected to the city than ever before, with free public access to nearly 45,000 square feet of ground-floor galleries, as well as a permanent commitment to free admission for all visitors 18 and younger.
“We are so excited to open the doors and welcome the public to the new SFMOMA. We have an incredible new building, an expanded collection with thousands of new works of the highest quality, and a staff that is proud to share what they’ve been working on for the past three years. This is your SFMOMA and we can’t wait to share it with you,” said Neal Benezra, the Helen and Charles Schwab
SFMOMA Collection and Inaugural Exhibitions
SFMOMA is one of the foremost museums of modern and contemporary art, with an exemplary collection of more than 33,000 works of architecture and design, media arts, painting, photography and sculpture, as well as a groundbreaking 100-year partnership to show the Doris and Donald Fisher Collection, one of the world’s greatest private collections of postwar and contemporary art.
Among the 260 selections on view from the Fisher Collection at the opening are important works of American abstraction, Pop, Minimal and figurative art by artists such as Chuck Close, Ellsworth Kelly, Lee Krasner, Roy Lichtenstein, Agnes Martin and Andy Warhol.
Works of German art after the 1960s by such artists as Sigmar Polke and Gerhard Richter; a broad range of Alexander Calder works from the late 1920s to the late 1960s; and sculpture by leading British artists including Tony Cragg, Richard Deacon, Barbara Hepworth and Richard Long.
Supported by a strong community of collectors, SFMOMA also has received more than 3,000 promised and outright gifts of artworks from 230 donors through the Campaign for Art. The inaugural exhibitions highlight the range and quality of 600 of these newly committed and acquired modern and contemporary works, including special installations focused on photography, contemporary art and drawing.
Photography has long been a cornerstone of SFMOMA, and the new Pritzker Center for Photography, made possible by the Lisa and John Pritzker Family Fund, offers the largest exhibition, interpretation and study space dedicated to photography in any art museum in the United States. Source by Snøhetta.
Location: San Francisco, California, USA
Architects + Architect of Record: Snøhetta
Associate Architect: EHDD, San Francisco
Partner-in-Charge: Craig Dykers
Project Architects: Aaron Dorf, Lara Kaufman, Jon McNeal
Senior Architects: Simon Ewings, Alan Gordon, Marianne Lau,
Elaine Molinar, Kjetil Trædal Thorsen
Project Team: Nick Anderson, Behrang Behin, Sam Brissette, Chad Carpenter, Michael Cotton, Aroussiak Gabrielian, Kyle Johnson, Nick Koster, Mario Mohan, Neda Mostafavi, Anne-Rachel Schiffmann, Carrie Tsang, Giancarlo Valle
Principal + President EHDD: Duncan Ballash
Project Architect EHDD: Lotte Kaefer,
Project Manager EHDD: Rebecca Sharkey
Project Managers EHDD: Terry Reagan, Don Young, Bob Reuter, TJ Reagan, Inc.
AV design: BBI Engineering
Civil Engineering: KPFF
Conservation studio, lab and art storage design: Samuel Anderson Architects
Electrical: The Engineering Enterprise
Façade Maintenance Engineer: CS Caulkins
Façade Design Assist: Kreysler & Associates, Enclos
Fire Life Safety Code and Sprinkler Engineering: The Fire Consultants
Client: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Square Footage – Total: 460,000 square feet – 225,000 square feet (Botta building) plus 235,000 square feet (Snøhetta expansion)
Area: New 225 000 ft2, Renovated 40,000 ft2
Year: 2010 – completed 2016
Photographs: Henrik Kam, Iwan Baan, Joe Fletcher, Jon McNeal, Courtesy of Snøhetta
