SAN FRANCISCO AREA BY AREA - San Francisco and Northern California - page 114

Exploring the San Francisco Museum
of Modern Art

The Museum of Modern Art is both an outstanding repository
of modern and contemporary art and a powerhouse of
inspiration and encouragement to the local art scene. With
thousands of works by American artists, its strengths lie
in the American Abstract Expressionist school, the art
of California, and artists of the San Francisco Bay Area.
However, it is also renowned for its international collection,
particularly in the areas of Mexican painting, Fauvism,
and German Expressionism.

museumcollections include
Stuart Davis, Marsden Hartley,
Frida Kahlo, Wilfredo Lam,
Georgia O'Keeffe, Rufino
Tamayo, and Joaquin Torres-
Garcia. One of the museum's
most powerful images is The
Flower Carrier , a 1935 oil
painting by Mexican artist
Diego Rivera, who is celebrated
for his murals (see p142) .
Another exhibition area
permanently shows works by
Jasper Johns, Robert
Rauschenberg, and Andy
Warhol, among others, from the
Anderson Collection of
American Pop Art.
There is a good collection of
the European Modernists,
including notable paintings by
Jean Arp, Max Beckmann,
Constantin Brancusi, Georges
Braque, Andre Derain, Franz
Marc, and Pablo Picasso.
Large collections of works by
Swiss-born Paul Klee, and the
famous French painter of the
Fauvist school, Henri Matisse,
are accommodated in individual
galleries. Henri Matisse's Femme
au Chapeau (Woman with a Hat)
is perhaps the museum's best
known painting.
The survey of 20th-century art
examines Surrealism, with works
by Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, and
Yves Tanguy.

Women of Algiers (1955) by Pablo Picasso

faculty of the California School
of Fine Arts, now the San
Francisco Art Institute (see p88) .
Clyfford Still donated 28 of his
paintings to the museum in 1975.
Other prominent North and
Latin American artists whose
works are displayed in the

Paintings and Sculpture
Included in the museum's
permanent holdings are over
6,000 paintings, sculptures and
works on paper. Major artists
and schools of European, North
American and Latin American art
from the 20th century are
represented. Paintings and
sculpture from 1900 through to
1960 are in the second-floor
galleries, while post-1960
contemporary painting,
sculpture and works on paper
are displayed on the fifth floor.
American Abstract Express-
ionism is well represented at the
museum by Philip Guston,
Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline,
Joan Mitchell, and Jackson
Pollock, whose Guardians of the
Secret is a masterpiece of
the genre.
Separate galleries have been
allocated for paintings by
Clyfford Still, who in the mid-
20th century served on the

Architecture and Design
The Department of Archi-
tecture and Design was
founded in 1983. Its function is
to procure and maintain a
collection of historical and
contemporary architectural

92 Chaise (1992) by Holt
Hinshaw Pfau Jones