The Asian Art Museum, de Young Museum and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art will all reopen to the public this week after over three months of closure. The Asian Art Museum will reopen Thursday, March 4, followed by de Young on March 6, and SFMOMA on March 7. The news follows Mayor London Breed’s announcement today that San Francisco has entered the red tier, which allows cultural institutions to operate at 25% capacity.
All three museums will boast new exhibitions, installed during their temporary closure due to the pandemic’s winter surge. At the Asian Art Museum, that includes Zheng Chongbin: State of Oscillation, an “ephemeral chamber” of paintings, videos and translucent material in the light-filled Bogart Court; After Hope: Videos of Resistance, 50 short videos made by artists across Asia and the Asian diaspora; and Memento: Jayashree Chakravarty and Lam Tung Pang, an exhibition of two large-scale works by contemporary artists from Kolkata and Hong Kong, respectively.
The de Young hosts Calder-Picasso, a touring exhibition making its first U.S. stop in San Francisco. With over 100 paintings, sculptures, drawings and photographs, Calder-Picasso centers on the both artists’ occupation with “the void,” representations of space, time and inner emotions.
Also new to returning de Young audiences is Nampeyo and the Sikyátki Revival, an installation of pots by the famed Tewa-Hopi potter Nampeyo, alongside additional examples of Hopi pottery and work by four generations of the artist’s descendants.
At SFMOMA, the museum reopens with Close to Home: Creativity in Crisis, featuring newly commissioned work by seven Bay Area artists, and fresh additions to the series Bay Area Walls by Liz Hernández, Erina Alejo and Adrian L. Burrell. The museum’s New Work gallery will also feature an installation by Charles Gaines, including drawings, videos and a musical composition based on Supreme Court trial documents from the Dred Scott Decision of 1857.
