San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

SFMOMA opened on January 18, 1935, as the San Francisco Museum of Art under the leadership of founding director Grace McCann Morley. It initially occupied the fourth floor of the War Memorial Veterans Building on Van Ness Avenue. The museum's permanent collection was established by a significant gift of several hundred artworks from Albert M. Bender, including works by Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, which formed the nucleus of the holdings.

Bender continued to donate over 1,100 objects and endowed the first purchase fund before his death in 1941. In 1945, the museum temporarily relocated to Post Street to accommodate the United Nations Charter signing, and later added 'Modern' to its name to better reflect its scope.

The museum's architectural history is defined by two major structures. In 1995, it moved to a new facility on Third Street designed by Swiss architect Mario Botta, featuring a distinctive black-and-white striped cylindrical light well and striated brick facade. This building was the largest new American art museum of the decade.

In 2016, following a three-year closure, the museum reopened after a major expansion designed by the Norwegian firm Snøhetta. This addition, which opened on May 14, 2016, increased the total space to approximately 235,000 square feet and includes a large-scale vertical garden on the third floor, described as the biggest public vertical garden in the United States.

SFMOMA's collection is anchored by the Albert M. Bender gift and the Elise S. Haas Collection, which includes Matisse's seminal work. The museum holds significant works by Jackson Pollock, having hosted his first solo museum exhibition, and received a monumental work by Robert Rauschenberg donated by Phyllis Wattis. A major acquisition strategy involved the Prentice and Paul Sack Photographic Trust, which provided over 1,800 photographs spanning the medium's history.

The museum also houses the Doris and Donald Fisher Collection, one of the world's leading collections of modern and contemporary art, which was integrated into the museum in 2009. The collection is organized into departments for painting and sculpture, photography, architecture and design, and media arts.

SFMOMA is historically significant as the first West Coast institution dedicated exclusively to modern art, setting a precedent for regional museums. Under Grace McCann Morley, it was a pioneer in recognizing photography as a fine art and establishing the first photography collection at a major museum. The museum has consistently served as a platform for contemporary discourse, launching initiatives like the biennial and the Pritzker Center for Photography, the largest of its kind in the United States.

Its evolution from a small gallery to a major cultural hub, marked by the 1995 Botta building and the 2016 Snøhetta expansion, reflects its enduring role as a leading repository for 20th and 21st-century art.