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SFMOMA Rooftop Sculpture Garden

view from the 5th floor gallery, cafe to the left

Today, I went to the SFMOMA—mostly to see the recently opened rooftop sculpture garden. This trip I remembered to bring my camera, but not take it out of my car trunk, so the images within are from my trusty cell phone.

They seemed to maintained the overall size of the 5th floor gallery with the addition of a glass wall overlooking the sculpture garden, but my overall impression is Eh. While it is pleasant enough, there aren’t really any views (note the high walls and its location in back of the museum). The sculptures currently installed are of no interest to me, except for the bronze head of and by Bob Arneson (kind of like this but blackish). His work always makes me smile. Overall the space seems very useable, but not worth a special trip to see it. Probably a good place to have a party.

My two favorite museum roofs are the New Museum and the Pasadena Museum of Art, though in fairness they were intended as vistas and not to display art. The old DIA building in Chelsea was pretty good for both.

Downstairs, in permanent collection, they had a nice Matisse still life I hadn’t seen before—though it could have been up for years. SFMOMA didn’t have an image on their site but I found one on flickr. It is much better in person. The Robert Frank exhibition was good. I think my favorites were from the Black White and Things section of the his exhibition, but I couldn’t find them on the web.

view from the cafe