Today’s main agenda item: a visit to the San Francisco Musem of Modern Art (SFMOMA) and a chance to find my way around the city. SFMOMA is one of the signature temples of modern art around the world: a bright, voluminous space housing many first-rank examples from the canon of western art orthodoxy. If you are looking for big names, big pictures and an amazing building in which to house them, look no further. There was the obligatory Warhol, an array of Matisses plus some sizeable Clyfford Still abstracts amongst many others. The Gerhard Richter paintings in particular were a standout, an astonishing range of styles and ideas with such a high degree of finish. I failed to take any snaps of them, however. Perhaps that is the ultimate mark of respect, to leave them in situ and not cart them off into cyberspace in bastardised form?
Poklong Anading
So far, so familiar. There was also a range of temporary exhibitions, of which I found myself drawn to ‘Constellations: Photographs in Dialogue’, and within this, the section on ‘Forms of Identity’ was nicely challenging. Poklong Anading’s series of portraits in which the subject shines sunlight via a mirror back at the camera in order to conceal their identities was particularly eye-catching.
Overall, (dare I say it?), I was disappointed; or rather, I left feeling that I wanted more. The museum could not have been more pleasing, but therein lies the problem. I found it insufficiently challenging. As I exited through the gift shop, my eyes alighted on a book entitled ‘Museum of the Future – Now What?’. I bought a copy. In the context of my visit, I wonder what the impact of digital technology will be on the traditional white cube experience. Will one subsume the other?
I finished the day with a nod to Guy Debord and a derive downtown. I think he would have been proud of me: quite by chance, and following what turned out to be incorrect directions from a stranger, I arrived at the seafront and at the ‘wrong’ bridge. I did, however, manage to locate the Google SF offices, which were very dull. Tech is never far away, however, as the Firefox monument showed. ‘Doing good is part of our code’, apparently.
Tomorrow, now fully acclimatised, I begin my programme of meetings with artists, to join the conversation. I can’t wait!
