Opening an Era

Michael Jang, "Golden Gate Bridge Fiftieth Anniversary," 1987. © Michael Jang/Promised gift of the Woodrow Jang Family

Robert Adams, "Arvada, Colorado," from the series "Gone? Colorado in the 1980s," 1984-1987. © Robert Adams/Courtesy of Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco/Promised gift of Randi and Bob Fisher

Lewis Baltz, "Claremont," 1973. © Estate of Lewis Baltz/Promised gift of David Mahoney and Winn Ellis

Dawoud Bey, "Betty Selvage and Faith Speights," from "The Birmingham Project," 2012. © Dawoud Bey/Courtesy of Rena Bransten Projects/Promised gift of Courtnay Haden

Dorothea Lange, "The Road West, U.S. 54 in Southern New Mexico," 1938. © Oakland Museum of California, the City of Oakland, gift of Paul S. Taylor/Collection of the Sack Photographic Trust and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, gift of Shirley Davis

Christian Marclay, "Allover (Dixie Chicks, Nat King Cole, and Others)," 2009. © Christian Marclay/Courtesy of USF Graphicstudio and Paula Cooper Gallery, New York/Promised gift of Daniel Rowen and Stuart Sproule/Photo: Will Lytch

Nicholas Nixon, "The Brown Sisters, East Greenwich, Rhode Island," 1980. © Nicholas Nixon/Courtesy of Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco and Yossi Milo Gallery, New York/Fractional and promised gift of Carla Emil and Rich Silverstein

Timothy H. O'Sullivan, "Cañon de Chelle," 1870-1874. Collection SFMOMA, gift of Betsy and Mark Gates

Peter Stackpole, "Golden Gate Bridge," 1935. © Estate of Peter Stackpole/Promised gift of Paul Sack to the Sack Photographic Trust

Edward Weston, "Whale Vertebra," 1934. © 1981 Center for Creative Photography, Arizona Board of Regents/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/Collection of Susan Herzig & Paul Hertzmann, Paul M. Hertzmann, Inc., San Francisco, CA, promised gift to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Imogen Cunningham, "Mills College Amphitheatre," circa 1920. © The Imogen Cunningham Trust/Collection SFMOMA, gift of Sandra Lloyd

Seiichi Furuya, "Izu," 1978, from the series "Portrait of Christine." © Seiichi Furuya/Collection SFMOMA, Anonymous Donors' Challenge Fund/Photo: Don Ross

Tseng Kwong Chi, "Grand Canyon, Arizona," 1987. © Estate of Tseng Kwong Chi/Muna Tseng Dance Projects, Inc., New York/Collection SFMOMA, gift of Carla Emil and Rich Silverstein

With the opening in May of the remodeled San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and its new Pritzker Center for Photography, the museum tripled the space allotted for photography, giving it the largest dedicated photo department in a U.S. art museum. “Because we have featured photography for a very long time, and have collectors who are deeply committed to photography, I think [the museum administrators] felt that this was one way of really distinguishing the museum—by featuring our outlook on contemporary art that sees photography as a very essential component of art,” said longtime photography curator Sandra S. Phillips in an interview with PDN.

The Pritzker Center for Photography, on the third floor of the museum’s Snøhetta-designed expansion, comprises four areas: a study center; the “Photography Interpretive Gallery,” or PIG, with interactive screens that allow visitors to do things such as learn how to make a photogram or watch any of the hundreds of artist interviews SFMOMA has recorded; the enhanced permanent collection galleries; and the new special exhibition galleries.

The inaugural show in the enhanced permanent collection space is “California and the West,” named after the celebrated Edward Weston book. The show features 200 gifts and promised gifts acquired in the museum’s Campaign for Art, its 2009–2015 effort to “deepen and expand” its permanent collection. The chronologically arranged show, which includes diverse photographic genres, focuses on the West’s natural landscape and on the changes brought upon the land by development, urban expansion and industrialization.

The special exhibition gallery opened with “About Time: Photography in a Moment of Change,” which explores the ways in which “the medium’s complex and ever-changing relationship with time has shaped our ideas about permanence and obsolescence, history and memory.” It spans the entire history of the medium, and incorporates formats that photography encompasses: slide projections, video installations and light boxes. “About Time” features legends such as Julia Margaret Cameron and Henri Cartier-Bresson, and contemporary artists, including Owen Kydd, Jason Lazarus and Zoe Leonard. —Larissa Archer