For Ansel Adams’s birthday: “Clouds, New Mexico” (1933)

(via SFMOMA)

Another pic from this morning’s media preview:

“Mark Bradford’s “Crow” (2003/2009) on view right when you get off the elevator in the 4th floor”

(via Instagram)

Love this photo from this morning’s Rineke Dijkstra / Mark Bradford media preview. More pics coming soon.

(via Instagram)

Couldn’t resist posting this for Valentine’s Day…

(via SFMOMA)

Happy Valentine’s Day from SFMOMA! Check out the explanation for how we picked the winning love letter (pictured here) for our Valentine’s Day project, and see who received an honorable mention on OPEN SPACE. <3

We’re looking for a couple of all-star Tumblr users who would like to attend our media preview for Rineke Dijkstra: A Retrospective and Mark Bradford on Wednesday morning. We’ll feed you breakfast while you mingle with the press, then you’ll get to meet the artists in person and see the exhibitions before anyone else. All we ask is that afterwards, you make a post about the experience on your own Tumblr. Sound good? Send us a message if so!

“Michael Horse and the Revival of Ledger Art”

Read about it: SFMOMA | OPEN SPACE

ALL SUBMISSIONS TO OUR VALENTINE’S DAY PROJECT ARE DUE BY 5PM TODAY. (Sorry for yelling, but we’re excited and want you to submit a love letter!)

Did we mention that there are prizes involved? And that Internet fame is at stake? 

(via Facebook)

One more love letter to Calder’s Lone Yellow:

A Love Poem to Lone Yellow

I love you because you amaze me
pieces of metal made to look weightless
as you float upon the air
made by a genius creator
of whom I share my name
but none of his mastery
of turning mere materials into something so intricate
and reminds me as I gaze upwards
that balance is a delicate endeavour

(via SFMOMA)

artphotocollector:

“I finally managed to try to do away with myself, as neatly and concisely as possible…. I would rather die young leaving various accomplishments, some work, my friendship with you, and some other artifacts intact, instead of pell-mell erasing all of these delicate things.”—Francesca Woodman

Francesca Woodman is regaining (quite rightly) a lot of attention these days—some thirty years after she took her own life. Suicide at any age is a terrible tragedy, and at the age of 22, Francesca Woodman ended a life/career she might never have imagined would lead to such a powerful, posthumous reputation.

Her work is self-reflective, surrealistic and complex. Looking at her images it’s impossible not to feel the deep emotional undercurrents that must have been going on while she was working.  And knowing her life ended in suicide makes it difficult to engage her work outside of that prism.  If she were alive today, how would we feel about her work? 

Noted Art critic Arthur Danto wrote: “It is impossible to view her work without being drawn into the vast questions it raises about life, art and the meaning and embodiment of sex…. Her work unfolds over time like the oeuvre of a brilliant and precocious poet, like Keats or Rimbaud, whose voice is present in every line.”

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s current exhibit of her work will end in one week on February 20th.  Next month, for those of us on the east coast, The Guggenheim will open a Francesca Woodman show on the 16th of March.  My hat’s off to both museums and their teams for putting on these retrospectives, and giving us the opportunity not only to see work that’s never been exhibited, but more importantly, to reconsider Francesca Woodman’s legacy.  Lane Nevares

If you haven’t seen our Francesca Woodman exhibition yet, you’re runnin’ out of time: it closes on Feb. 20.

Okay, just ONE more for Richter’s birthday (this is a personal favorite, so I just had to sneak it in before the end of the day).

Gerhard Richter’s Lesende (Reading) (1994) | painting | oil on linen

(via SFMOMA)