Oral History Project Captures
Bay Area’s Influence on Art

A $1 million challenge grant awarded to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is supporting three major initiatives: the SFMOMA Oral History Project, exhibition support, and capacity-building efforts.

The SFMOMA Oral History Project captures observations, anecdotes, and milestones through the eyes of museum friends and colleagues, offering an incomparable glimpse into the museum’s history and the Bay Area’s role in shaping modern and contemporary art. Combined with the museum’s existingarchive of audio and video interviews with artists, curators, directors, collectors, and donors produced since the 1970s, the Oral History Project conveys the unique history and influence of the West Coast’s first modern art museum.

Accessible through computer kiosks and screenings in the Koret Visitor Education Center; SFMOMA’s Research Library; the Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley; the SFMOMA website; and the University of California, Berkeley’s Regional Oral History Office, the interviews will be included in SFMOMA’s 75th-anniversary exhibition and its companion catalogue in 2010.

Three major exhibitions have also been made possible through the Koret challenge grant. The Surreal Calder (March 3–May 21, 2006) drew 280,000 visitors to explore Alexander Calder’s roots in the Parisian surrealist movement. In Picasso and American Art (February 23–May 28, 2007), over 150 works from American artists were displayed next to Pablo Picasso’s canvases to show the influence the Spanish painter had on this country. The exhibition Matisse: The Painter as Sculptor (June 9–September 16, 2007) showcases the amazing forms created by an artist best known for his color-filled paintings.

Perhaps most importantly, this timely grant has allowed the museum to further develop its major gifts program, attracting new and increased gifts of $5,000 and higher from individual donors. By providing matching funds to the Koret challenge grant, these gifts help ensure the steady growth of contributions to SFMOMA.