The New SFMOMA, So Help Me

The plan was to focus on the architecture, not on the art, because I'm still afflicted with shingles (actually, postherpetic neuralgia, one of the complications), and I'm so woozy on pain meds that trying to focus on art as well as on the design of massively expanded San Francisco Museum of Modern Art was out of the question.

So that's what we did, Claudia M. and I.

 She drove us to BART and acted as my keeper/assistant while we roamed around the new version of SFMOMA, which you probably know is now the largest museum of modern/contemporary art in the US, bigger even than New York's Modern.  It's 3-plus acres of gallery space, almost triple the size of the original 1995 Mario Botta building.

The new logo

An aside: Dear  readers, I know I'm a cranky crone, but how big do we need a museum to be? The art critic for the San Francisco Chronicle logged 4.3 miles walking around this behemoth, and it took him five hours.  We put in more than two hours of near-continuous walking and no art-looking on what was one of the Members' Preview Days.

From the front, SFMOMA looks the same, the big eye (oculus) of  Botto's design is still there, as is the brick facade.  Rising behind it is the ten-story addition designed by Snohetta, an international architecture firm inspired by "...the waters and fog of San Francisco Bay."  (Please imagine a diagonal line through the "o" in Snohetta.)

 Viewed from across the street, the new wing rises behind the original 1995 building.

Oliver Wainwright wrote in The Guardian that the new wing looks "more like a giant meringue, a building-sized baked alaska slumped on the skyline [behind] Botta's weighty temple."  I like the exterior of the new wing, for all its slumped Baked Alaska-ness.  Here it is from another angle:

 A postcard view from the side: the slump doesn't wrap around the corners

Inside, the original lobby/atrium is much the same, except that the central staircase has disappeared, replaced by a "dog-leg" staircase which angles up to the new second floor lobby:

 

The new upstairs lobby, where ticketing now happens, is more or less on the scale of an airport:

...with banks of computers and legions of welcom-ers in orange shirts:

 

We took refuge on a pleasant sculpture terrace on the third floor, gazing at the remarkable "Living Wall" of plants while we ate smuggled-in sandwiches:

The Living Wall, plus sculpture

Close-up of botanical textures. Most of the plants are California natives.

Back inside, we found a small but fascinating exhibit of drawings and models documenting the evolution of  Snohetta's design for the new wing:

More than 700 panels of fiberglass-reinforced polymer panels are mounted on the facade

After that,  we visited floor after floor, some via elevators (the red ones go to the older wing, the silver ones to the new)...

..and some via stairs:

...and more stairs...

 

...which are beautifully lit:

We'd emerge in long hallways, with galleries to the right.

A scarcity of benches

The few galleries we walked through were handsome rooms of a good size:

An Oldenburg sculpture and Lichtenstein painting, both donated by Doris and Donald Fisher, who founded the Gap and provided the funds for the new wing to house their formidable collection. 

Untitled, Martin Puryear (wire mesh, tar, Douglas fir)

At this point, at about floor 5, we were tired and in need of caffeine.  In the old days, we'd whip down to the lobby and visit the cafe, where you could get a good cup of coffee and a dessert (or a scrumptious lunch) and in off-hours use a spare chair to put your feet up.

No such  luck. The old cafe is gone and in the process of being remodeled into a restaurant called "In Situ," run by the owner of a Michelin 3-star restaurant, which does not bode well for those of us who want to unwind and eat cheap.

 Gone is the old cafe (right) just off the atrium/lobby

 A new restaurant, In Situ, is under construction in its place.

  

At the moment,  the choices for lunch or a pick-me-up are Sightglass, a coffee bar on the third floor, where you can buy artisanal coffee or teas and perch on stubby backless sofas, or to lean against a counter or table:

The Sightglass coffee bar: not much seating

Or Cafe 5 on the fifth floor, which serves lunches and presumably coffee AND has tables and real chairs.  Alas, the line was just about out the door.  We went back to the Sightglass coffee bar and drank (expensive) coffee while leaning forward on a backless couch. 

After that, we made it to the seventh floor and checked out one of the oddest displays--Jason Farago, another Guardian critic, calls it "a calamity"--a hodgepodge, garage-sale arrangement of art promised to the museum through the Campaign for Art, the museum's attempt to lure new donors.  

"I don't get it," said Claudia, staring at a pair of latrines.

Neither did I, plus I was so tired from trekking that we decided to give up. 

We rode back down to the old lobby/atrium via a red elevator, and after a quick look at the museum store (same as it used to be), we were nearly out the door when a museum employee approached us with two rectangular white boxes.

"Would you ladies like a gift?" she said.

"Sure," we answered. 

Here's what we each got:

And what they're charging $26 for in the museum store:

Go figure.  Most people who were leaving got no gift, but Claudia says it's because "we looked nice."

The Upshot:  If ever a museum called for a Surgical Strike Strategy, this is it.  On future visits, I plan  to go to one or two exhibits; figure out which, if any, restaurant provides the best rest-and-snack spot; sweep through the Museum Store; and GO.  I love the art, and I love the exterior of the new wing and the Living Wall.  But the scale of the new museum is overwhelming and not meant to be swallowed in a single gulp.

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is open daily, 10 am-5 pm, Thursdays until 9 pm, starting May 14.  Admission $19-25, free 18 and under.  151 Third Street, SF.  Take BART to the Montgomery Street Station. 

Lights for sale in the museum store

The new Berkeley Art Museum and a Few Thoughts on Nancy Reagan

This is what we woke up to this morning:

Toppled

Fifteen years ago,  a landscaper chose the wrong species of tree fern to plant up against the house, a tall one instead of one sturdier squat one.  It grew away from the house and toward the sun until most of the foliage was on one side.  Recent torrents of rain did it in.

Not a crisis, obviously, but startling.  Now we'll get a squat one.

* * * * *

A couple of weeks ago, I checked out the new UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, which opened in January in the former campus printing plant.  I like it--the light's good, the spaces feel friendly to visitors and art, and the cafe serves good food.

I've followed the campus art museum from pillar to post, starting in the winter of 1969, when I drove up to Berkeley from UC Santa Barbara with friends.  At that time, the Art Gallery was housed in an old building near Sproul Hall:

The Old Art Gallery, as it's now known

By the fall of 1970, I'd transferred to Berkeley, and from my window in a high-rise dorm I looked down on the back of the brand-new art museum, a gigantic Brutalist structure on Bancroft Way.  One evening I looked out my window and saw a guy in black rappelling down its side on a black rope. We all thought the new museum was the bee's knees.

 The front of the old art museum

By the 1980's, I hardly ever went to the art museum because it was too hard to find parking, and because, with a few exceptions, I didn't think the shows were very interesting.  I did, however, become a regular visitor to the campus printing plant, in downtown Berkeley, because by then I was a writer/editor in the Graduate Division.

Many years later, the massive concrete museum was found to be a seismically unsafe, so it was propped up and braced while people decided what to do about a new building.   To my amazement,  the new location turned out to be the now-abandoned printing plant, close to BART and restaurants. The 1939 building was going to be re-purposed to look like this:

At the corner of Center and Oxford Streets.  Designed by Diller Scofidio & Renfro.

This is what it looks like today:

Stretching the block between Center and Addison, across from the West Gate of the campus. To the left, the former printing plant, and to the right, an addition with a huge screen at one end.

The screen faces Addison Street:

Walking alongside it

The Center Street entrance

A Rosie Lee Tompkins quilt

The Forum, where they were setting up for a dance performance

A view across Center Street, which is lined with restaurants, including Top Dog and Bongo Burger, Berkeley institutions

Cafe Babette on the museum's second level; no outdoor seating, alas

The stairwells are ORANGE

More orange

The Berkeley Art Museum is open Wednesday-Sunday from 11 am-9 pm.  General admission is $12; senior admission is $10.  Free admission to UC students, staff, and retirees.

 * * * * *

My First Lady archives

 I have something of a side-line in First Ladies. I read all the biographies and autobiographies I can lay my hands on, Republicans and Democrats, although I go only as far back as Eleanor Roosevelt.

These ladies range from feisty (Bess Truman) to Nobel-material (Eleanor Roosevelt) to silly (Mamie Eisenhower).   Pat Nixon was piteous, and Babs Bush, however well-mannered she is, apparently can be downright unpleasant; one of her assistants said she's "a good person, but not nice."

Nancy Reagan, in my opinion, was insecure and sad.  As a child, she was abandoned by her father and then, temporarily, by her mother. I don't think she ever got over it. She was very afraid of a) being alone, and b) getting it wrong, although she often did--buying new White House china during a recession and launching the "Just say No" campaign are two examples.

If only it were as simple as just saying "no."

 Long-time Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan wrote that around the White House Nancy was known as "The Hairdo with Anxiety." Noonan herself tried to find a pillar to hide behind if she saw her coming, as Raisa Gorbachev probably did after this meeting, described in a puff piece produced by the Reagan Library: "Mrs. Reagan arrived wearing this Galanos gray suit.  Raisa Gorbachev, in contrast, was starkly dressed."

Poor Raisa.

Nevertheless, when I heard that Nancy Reagan died,  I thought, she's had some tough times and rest in peace. The internet lit up with very unkind, vitriolic comments, and I thought, why? She's gone, poor woman.

Then came her funeral and the likes of Judy Woodruff and the New York Times going on about her great romance with Ronnie (I'd call it an enmeshed relationship, excluding even their children) and her social graces as the queen of Camelot in 1980's-era Washington in her Adolfos and Galanos.   Is this really admirable?  Are we that desperate for heroines?  

Back to Eleanor and her hairnets.

Banished Toilet, Sneaky Conservatives, Hotdog with Champagne

And now what I know you've all been waiting for:  An update on the bathroom project.

The drywall is in and now the "tape-ers" have taken over.

The before picture:

 And now:

The toilet is mostly out of sight!

I know, in the Age of Ebola, ISIS, and Marjorie Dannenfelser (see below), this is not a very big deal, but I'm very happy about this transformation, 30 years overdue.  And there are SEVEN NEW DRAWERS for fabric stacked in the basement.

* * * * *

Yesterday, when I flipped open the latest issue of The New Yorker yesterday and found this photograph,  I thought, Whoa!

Does anyone else think this woman looks scary?  Her name is Marjorie Dannenfelser, and  she's the president of the Susan B. Anthony List.   Sounds feminist, right?

"Oh, good, she's on our side!" I thought.

But, no.  The sole aim of the Susan B. Anthony List is to abolish abortions; the group funnels money to anti-abortion candidates.   If you're a person who believes in reproductive choice for women, she's as scary as they come--clever, glib, and passionate about her cause,  a one-issue gal.

"We can't have a Democratic majority in the House or the Senate right now," she said.  "If we're close, I can't in good conscience, for the cause of life, support even a great pro-life Democrat."

The article's called, "The Intensity Gap," and, boy, can you see it in her face.

And why "Susan B. Anthony?"   Because in 1869, Anthony decried, "the horrible crime of child-murder...Guilty?  Yes, no matter what the motive, love of ease, or a desire to save from suffering the unborn innocent, the woman is awfully guilty who commits the deed."

You can read the article here and see how the quote was taken way out of context by the S.B. Anthony List.  Hey, I was taken in.  How many others?

* * * * *

On Sunday, I was feeling so housebound from being sick for two weeks that I has to get out of the house, away from remodeling detritus/chaos, all of it.

So, we drove over to San Francisco to see a new show at the Legion of Honor, "Houghton Hall: Portrait of an English Country House."  

Go, if you're an Anglophile like me.  Don't go, if you are driven mad by the gap between the rich and the poor and can't be seduced for an hour by paintings, china, furniture, tapestries, and other what-nots collected by the family of the Marquess of Cholmondeley.

 Houghton Hall, Norfolk.  Built in the 1720's for Sir Robert Walpole, Britain's first prime minister.

 The Cabinet Room  (the remarkably small bed is in the show)

.

 

 The Marble Parlour  (some of the furniture is in the show)

 The Saloon in Houghton Hall

Portrait of Sybil, Countess Rocksavage (Later Marchioness of Cholmondeley), John Singer Sargent, 1913.  She used funds from her family, the Sassoons, to restore the house.

 They're even selling English tea towels in the gift shop! Bought one, of course.  But the high point of the day was lunch: a hotdog and champagne.

Had to come home and take a nap

The Houghton Hall show is up through January 18, 2005.  Hard-core Anglophiles can even have an English tea in the cafe.