Celmins’s images of oceans and galaxies are powerfully personal and intimate, even if they are mysteriously deserted and distant.
SFMOMA
A 1960s Sustainable Community Outside San Francisco and Its Struggle to Survive
Designers wanted to create a community that was equitable, affordable, and open-minded. But over the years developers began courting wealthy weekenders, and today units sell at stratospheric prices.
Orientalism Persists in Conversations Around Chinese Contemporary Art
In Art and China after 1989, now at SFMOMA, China’s emergence onto the world stage is eclipsed by persisting Orientalist ideas and Western modes of curation.
René Magritte’s Bad Paintings
When Belgium was occupied by Germany during World War II, René Magritte adopted the style of Pierre-Auguste Renoir and painted images based on popular cartoons.
Photographer Susan Meiselas on the Relationships She’s Built with Her Subjects
Meiselas, whose documentary photography is wide ranging, says the one thing that ties her work together is her “relationships with subjects over time.”
John Akomfrah Discusses Channeling J.M.W. Turner and Disasters at Sea
“The Deluge,” a monumental Turner painting showing a Biblical flood, is currently paired with Akomfrah’s “Vertigo Sea” at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Walker Evans’s Eye on the City
While Walker Evans may be best known for his photographs from small towns across the US during the Great Depression, an exhibition at SFMOMA shows him also as a longtime New Yorker fascinated with the particulars of urban life.
Bringing the Theatricality of Magic and Comedy to Art
Lindsey White, a recipient of SFMOMA’s 2017 SECA Art Award, challenges assumptions and orthodoxies in irreverent photographs, sculptures, and installations.
Why Edvard Munch Began Painting Portraits of the Soul
An exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art illustrates how, over time, Munch moved away from observational painting toward something more symbolic and emotional.
Send a Text to SFMOMA and They’ll Text You Back an Artwork
You can explore SFMOMA’s collection now with the ease of a text, though you don’t always know what you’re going to get.
The Evolution of Diane Arbus in 35mm
The exhibition diane arbus: in the beginning gathers images the photographer shot between 1956 and 1962, when she started using the distinctive Rolleiflex camera with which she captured her most famous photos.
Diaristic Maps Composed of Tens of Thousands of Photographs
Sohei Nishino’s maps are hellish auto-portraits, subjective representations built through fantastic repetition.