I quite like San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMA)
Feb 03, 2008 in General
I was in San Francisco a few weeks ago with work, and as I had planned the trip so I had a Sunday to recover from my jetlag, I thought I’d do something which for a change wasn’t entirely inspired by the excellent exchange rate.
I’ve been to a few Modern Art museums in my time – the SF MoMA isn’t particularly big (not helped by one entire floor being closed for refitting when I visited) but managed to fill a good 2 and a half hours of my day without boring me too much.
The highlights included Navigating the Imagination by the appropriately-named “Jeff Wall” – huge, wall-sized prints of genuinely interesting photos. They reminded me a bit of a Where’s Wally cartoon – the sheer size of the prints and width of the lens means you’re constantly searching for the focal point of the image – in one, your eye searches up and down rows of identical American suburban houses until you finally realise why the photo is entitled “eviction” – there’s a tiny little man being dragged from his home as his neighbours look on in astonishment.
Also memorable was Take Your Time by Olafur Eliasson, which was a series of interactive/ immersive exhibits. It included a room lit with bright orange light, which had the bizarre effect of removing all colour from your vision leaving only contrast, a hole in the wall which turned out to house a series of mirrors giving the impression you and an infinite number of other “you”s were all looking out the side of a building, and an ingenious setup where walking on creaky floorboards disturbed a pool of water which was in turn projected onto the wall – very disorientating and cool.
I had some tasty posh gnocchi and a glass of red wine while sitting outside the front of the museum before embarking on a 5-hour walk in the sunshine around North SF – that was a good day.