The
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (
SFMOMA) is a
modern art museum in
San Francisco,
California.
It opened in 1935 under director
Grace L. McCann Morley as the
San Francisco Museum of Art, the first museum on the West Coast devoted solely to 20th-century art. Morley was the director until 1958. George D. Culler was the director from 1958 to 1965.
For its first sixty years, the museum occupied upper floors of the
War Memorial Veterans Building in the
Civic Center. Under director
Henry T. Hopkins (1974–1986) the museum added "Modern" to its title in 1975, and established an international reputation.
In 1995 the museum moved to its current location at 151
Third Street, adjacent to
Yerba Buena Gardens in the
SOMA district and its showpiece facility designed by
Mario Botta. Inviting comparison to the preeminent
Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in
New York City, the museum re-branded itself "SFMOMA".
The museum has in its collection important works by
Andy Warhol,
Jackson Pollock,
Richard Diebenkorn,
Paul Klee,
Marcel Duchamp and
Ansel Adams, among others. The cinema series
Art in Cinema was started at SFMOMA in 1946 by filmmaker
Frank Stauffacher. Annually, the museum hosts more than twenty exhibitions and over three hundred educational programs.
In 2008, the museum launched a re-designed website, which includes the ability to browse the museum's permanent collection. It opened a rooftop garden, designed to be a gallery, in 2009.