San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (CLOSED FOR RENOVATION) Museum

(SFMOMA will be closed from June 2013 until early 2016 for building expansion and transformation. The museum's exhibitions will be moved completely off-site and will include collaborative and traveling museum exhibitions, site-specific installations, outdoor commissions, and neighborhood festivals. Please see the SFMOMA website for updated listings.)

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in Downtown San Francisco houses an impressive and internationally celebrated collection of contemporary and modern art. It is considered the first museum on the West Coast to dedicate its offering entirely to 20th-century art.

Designed by Swiss architect Mario Botta and founded in 1935 by Grace McCann Morley, the SF MoMa currently houses more than 26,000 works of photography, architecture, design, media arts, painting, and sculpture.

For its first six decades, the museum was located on the fourth floor of the War Memorial Veterans Building on Van Ness. Albert Bender gave 36 gifts – including Diego Rivera’s The Flower Carrier – which were the establishing works of the museum’s permanent collection. Bender went on to bestow the museum with its first purchase fund and donated more than 1,100 objects to SF MoMa throughout his life. In its second year, 1936, the museum featured the work of Matisse and launched its photography collection. In 1995, the SF MoMa opened in its new and current $60-million location at 151 Third Street in SOMA.

Every year, art events at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art have included more than 300 educational programs and 20 exhibitions, and feature an eclectic offering of iconic artists like Pollock, Warhol, Klee, and Ansel Adams.

In 2009, the museum gained an important loan from Doris and Donald Fisher of The Gap, who gave 1,100 works including pieces by Twombly, de Kooning, Chuck Close, Lichtenstein and more; the SF MoMa will have the pieces for 100 years.