by Ellen Edwards
Cities are dynamic, their districts wax and wane, are hot or not. And nowhere is this fact of urban life truer than San Francisco’s SoMa, the district South of Market Street, the long street that slices all the way through the city, from Twin Peaks to the magical Ferry Building at the Embarcadero. Bordered by Market Street, and set between the Bay and the Freeway, SoMa is now an area of museums, gardens, entertainment centers, great restaurants and manicured parks. Once gritty and undesirable, an area into which few people ventured, SoMa is now hotter than hot, and filled with arts and entertainment venues, expensive residential lofts, and some of the most contemporary and visitor-friendly museums in the city.
The gentrification of SoMa began with the building of the Moscone Convention Center, The Sony Metreon Entertainment Center, and the Yuerba Buena Center for the Arts. The gentrification of the area slowed in response to economic realities, but has resumed with a vengeance. Today, SoMa has some of the city’s finest hotels and restaurants, the Zeum, a kid-friendly arts and technology museum, and the Museum of Crafts and Folk Art, along with the new Contemporary Jewish Museum and the dazzling San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
SFMoMA, was founded by the visionary Grace Morley in 1935. Considered a radical venture at the time, it launched its pioneering film program in 1937. Although it received many important bequests and had a robust acquisition program, the museum was relegated to the fourth floor of the Civic Center for decades. In 1995, the museum moved to it’s elegant, $60 million post-modern quarters on 3rd Street in SoMa, designed by the Swiss architect Mario Botta, Next to the lovely Yuerba Buena gardens, the area is open and inviting, and has been a key element in the gentrification of the area.
The museum is the only one on the West Coast exclusively committed to the art of the 20th and 21st centuries. Its core collection is both American and global, and boasts an impressive range of sculptures, furniture, decorative arts and paintings by the greats, Cezanne, Matisse, Picasso, Duchamp, Mondrian and Klee. SFMoMA was the first museum to give Jackson Pollack a solo exhibition.
In 1995, the museum received an amazing gift, The Fisher Collection. Doris and Donald Fisher, founders of The Gap, donated their personal collection, 1100 major works, to the museum. It includes works by Calder, Close, deKooning, Kiefer, Kelly, Serra, Richter, Twombly and Agnes Martin.
In 2016, the museum will open an enormous, new addition, which will double its gallery space and house the Fisher Collection. Designed by the avant-garde firm, Snohetta, the expansion promises to extend the mission of this important museum even further, making San Francisco a must-see venue for contemporary art.