Watch: The Transformation of SFMOMA
HONG KONG, November 22, 2014 — Neal Benezra, the Director of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), was invited for a conversation with Alice Mong, the Executive Director of Asia Society Hong Kong Center, about the museum's exhibition programs and extinguished collections. While undergoing construction at the moment in expanding exhibition space, SFMOMA hasn't stopped exhibiting and is "On the Go" where various spaces around the Bay Area were used to display art for the public to enjoy.
Starting with the history of SFMOMA, Benezra shared the journey of how the museum grew to include many distinguished works of art and his thoughts about the architectural structure of the museum.
"I think although this building by Mario Botta gave the museum something very singular, very important, it's been very very successful in a great many ways in 1995. It's also, I think, not forward-looking. It really looks back to what I was describing earlier, this older idea of what the mission of the museum ought to be, and that was to be protective of the works of art in one's custody."
Thus, the reconstruction of the museum designed by the Oslo/New York-based architecture firm Snøhetta set to open in 2016.
Event information: SFMOMA On the Go
Video: Watch the complete program (1 hr., 13 min.)