SFMOMA Presents Major Retrospectives for Suzanne Jackson, KAWS and Alejandro Cartagena This Fall

SAN FRANCISCO, CA (June 17, 2025, updated July 11, 2025) — The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) announces its summer and fall 2025 exhibition program, featuring a wide range of presentations by artists from the Bay Area and around the globe.

The rich history of the San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) and its faculty and alumni is highlighted in People Make This Place: SFAI Stories, opening July 26. On August 9, the latest installment of SFMOMA’s ongoing New Work series opens with a new commission by the legendary fiber artist Sheila Hicks.

Suzanne Jackson: What Is Love, opening September 27, is the first retrospective devoted to the full breadth of her career and features more than 80 paintings and drawings from the 1960s to the present. (Re)Constructing History, an exhibition of works from SFMOMA’s photography collection, opens October 4 and reconsiders moments from the history of photography, anchored by Carrie Mae Weems’s major series, Constructing History.

KAWS: FAMILY opens November 15 and traces the artist’s multidimensional output over the last three decades in his first major West Coast museum exhibition. Alejandro Cartagena: Ground Rules, opening November 22, is the first retrospective for the acclaimed photographer, whose project-based works have examined environmental and social issues across a broad range of photographic processes.

“This upcoming season’s exhibitions reflect SFMOMA’s commitment to honoring legacies of art in the Bay Area and highlighting work by the boldest artists working around the world today,” said Christopher Bedford, Helen and Charles Schwab Director of SFMOMA. “We believe that every visitor to the museum will find something they can connect with in this remarkable program.”

For information on all current and ongoing exhibitions, installations and special projects, visit sfmoma.org/exhibitions.

People Make This Place: SFAI Stories

July 26, 2025–July 5, 2026

Floor 2

Exploring moments from the rich history of the San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI)—the West Coast’s oldest fine art school before its closure—this exhibition spotlights works by more than 50 former SFAI faculty and alumni included in the museum’s collection. The presentation underscores the school’s crucial role in fostering creativity and experimentation, featuring work by artists like Joan Brown, Miguel Calderón, Imogen Cunningham, Mike Henderson, Candice Lin, and Carlos Villa, among others.

The exhibition also includes a dynamic and quirky range of archival materials drawn from the SFMOMA Library and the SFAI Legacy Foundation and Archive, beginning in the post-World War II era with the founding of the school’s photography department by Ansel Adams. These include ephemera ranging from posters for 1950s Beat-era galleries run by artist alumni, to student newspapers, to flyers and photographs from the punk and new wave music scenes of the 1970s and early 1980s.

New Work: Sheila Hicks

August 9, 2025–August 9, 2026

Floor 4

For nearly seven decades, Sheila Hicks has created groundbreaking works that redefine the expressive possibilities of fiber as a sculptural form. Based in Paris since 1964, she incorporates natural and synthetic materials at a range of scales from intimate weavings made on handheld frames to monumental installations that inhabit architecture.

Hicks’s first solo exhibition at SFMOMA will feature a site-specific installation in the museum’s New Work gallery. The works are inspired by objects, textures and patterns observed in her adopted city or in her migratory life. Each draw from places with personal significance, from the cobblestones of her courtyard to the towering lighthouses of the rocky island of Ouessant, France and its treacherous, perilous and rugged landscape.

The SFMOMA presentation will include the artist’s beacon-like comets with vivid, intersecting and multilayered lines that evoke topographical terrains and panels composed of interwoven linen threads. A selection of small works reflects her daily experiments with new structures and materials. A towering central phare (lighthouse) of suspended twisting cords will anchor the installation and open new horizons. Reconfigured installations of the artist’s signature wrapped bâtons, and massive mounds of fiber in vibrant colors show how Hicks continually evolves materials and forms in a process she describes as “walking the tightrope into the future.”

The exhibition in SFMOMA’s New Work gallery continues with an expansive outdoor commission in the museum’s Floor 5 sculpture garden.

Since 1987, SFMOMA’s New Work series has provided a platform for artists to experiment with a new idea or body of work. The series focuses on the innovative visions of living artists and has played a key role in shaping the breadth and character of the museum’s collection and programming.

Suzanne Jackson: What Is Love

September 27, 2025–March 1, 2026

Floor 7

For over six decades, Suzanne Jackson has created lyrical, awe-inspiring paintings influenced by her deep respect for the natural world and continual belief in the connection between all living things. Driven by a search for creative freedom and a bohemian spirit indebted to the San Francisco ethos of the 1950s and 1960s in which she was raised, Jackson has led an expansive artistic life, first and foremost as a painter, and as a dancer, poet, theater designer and an ardent supporter of other artists.

This retrospective, the first devoted to the full breadth of Jackson’s career, celebrates her groundbreaking artistic vision through more than 80 paintings and drawings from the 1960s to the present that emphasize her innovative use of color, light and structure to expand the parameters of painting and illuminate beauty, peace and love. Organized chronologically, the exhibition spans early ethereal compositions on canvas that layer luminous washes of pigment and imagery from her dreams to recent three-dimensional, otherworldly paintings that suspend acrylic paint in mid-air and are often embedded with materials that draw on ancestral and cultural histories. The presentation concludes with a new large-scale commission that reflects on the global environmental crisis and addresses themes of migration and improvisation.

(Re)Constructing History

October 4, 2025–May 3, 2026

Floor 3

(Re)Constructing History embraces the possibility for photographs to both record an instant and capture the history embedded within the present. Borrowing its title from artist Carrie Mae Weems’s series, Constructing History, this exhibition invites audiences to imagine the layers of history we encounter through a seemingly fixed image.

Across three galleries, photographs explore complicated, painful and familiar histories. The first gallery examines Wall Street as a symbol of American power through its historic and modern depictions, while the second features artists who rework visual traditions through reference and appropriation. The final gallery considers how photography is uniquely positioned to expose the hidden forces behind changing environments and landmark formation.

In addition to Weems, this presentation celebrates contemporary Black artists Nona Faustine, Carla Williams and Dawoud Bey as anchors in each respective gallery. These artists create works that move beyond static, fixed documents, offering imaginative images that reveal stories of Black life previously unseen or unconsidered.

KAWS: FAMILY
November 15, 2025–May 3, 2026
Floor 4

KAWS: FAMILY is a dazzling exploration of the multidimensional work of American artist KAWS. Marking the artist’s first major museum exhibition on the West Coast, it traces the artist’s output over the past three decades through its keen ability to connect to shared emotions and culture. From paintings, drawings and sculptures to advertising interventions, product collaborations and limited-edition collectible toys, visitors will encounter the many creative expressions of KAWS’s distinctive language using recurring characters and pop culture appropriations.

At the heart of the exhibition is FAMILY (2021), a larger-than-life bronze sculpture that portrays KAWS’s beloved characters COMPANION, BFF and CHUM grouped as an intimate family unit. Through their gestures of closeness and vulnerability, visitors can see themselves reflected in these figures, creating a shared sense of kinship and empathy. Borrowing from popular animated characters and cultural icons, KAWS’s characters recontextualize familiar imagery, creating a dialogue around cultural memory and contemporary life.

Alejandro Cartagena: Ground Rules

November 22, 2025–April 19, 2026

Floor 3

Alejandro Cartagena: Ground Rules is the first major retrospective of the acclaimed photographer, bringing together over two decades of his work through an expansive multi-series presentation. Born in the Dominican Republic and based in Monterrey, Mexico, Cartagena explores pressing social and environmental issues through a striking range of photographic practices that includes documentary images, collage, appropriated vernacular photographs and AI-generated video. His work captures the complexities of suburban sprawl, the US-Mexico border and increasing economic inequality. As visually dynamic as they are politically incisive, his photographs prompt viewers to question the systems that shape our world. Though rooted in Mexico, Cartagena’s photographic series speak to shared global conditions of migration, environmental crisis and unchecked development, offering a powerful reflection on the broader forces defining life in the 21st century.

CREDITS

Major support for People Make This Place: SFAI Stories is provided by the Pritzker Exhibition Fund in Photography. Meaningful support is provided by the Agnes Cowles Bourne Bay Area Contemporary Arts Exhibition Fund and the Westridge Foundation.

Lead support for New Work: Sheila Hicks is provided by Randi and Bob Fisher. Significant support is provided by Robin Wright and Ian Reeves. Meaningful support is provided by Alka and Ravin Agrawal, Dolly and George Chammas, Jonathan Gans and Abigail Turin, and Adriane Iann and Christian Stolz.

Suzanne Jackson: What Is Love is co-organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. Major support is provided by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Lead support for Suzanne Jackson: What Is Love at SFMOMA is provided by Randi and Bob Fisher and the Stone Charitable Remainder Trust. Major support is provided by Mary Jo and Dick Kovacevich and The KHR McNeely Family Foundation, Kevin, Rosemary, and Hannah Rose McNeely. Significant support is provided by Pamela J. Joyner and Alfred J. Giuffrida and Deborah and Kenneth Novack. Meaningful support is provided by Ethan Beard and Wayee Chu, Lorna Meyer Calas and Dennis Calas, Dolly and George Chammas, Rummi and Arun Sarin Painting and Sculpture Fund, Komal Shah and Gaurav Garg, Sheri and Paul Siegel Exhibition Fund, Susan Swig, Wagner Foundation, Diane B. Wilsey, and Sonya Yu. Meaningful support is also provided by Fashion Partner Max Mara.

Lead support for KAWS: FAMILY is provided by the Phyllis C. Wattis Fund for Traveling Exhibitions.

Alejandro Cartagena: Ground Rules is co-organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Fundación MAPFRE, Madrid. The exhibition is curated by Shana Lopes, assistant curator of photography, with Alex Landry, curatorial assistant, photography. Major support of Alejandro Cartagena: Ground Rules at SFMOMA is provided by Katie Hall and Tom Knutsen, Kate and Wes Mitchell, and the Pritzker Exhibition Fund in Photography. Significant support is provided by The Black Dog Private Foundation, Jim Breyer, Concepción S. and Irwin Federman, and Nion McEvoy and Leslie Berriman. Meaningful support is provided by the Mary Jane Elmore West Coast Exhibition Fund and Lisa Stone Pritzker Family Fund. This project is carried out with the support of Fundación Jumex Arte Contemporáneo. Major support for (Re)Constructing History is provided by the Pritzker Exhibition Fund in Photography.

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Image Credits:

Alejandro Cartagena, Fragmented Cities, Escobedo, from the series Suburbia Mexicana, 2005-10; © Alejandro Cartagena, courtesy the artist

Carlos Villa, Painted Cloak, 1970-71, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Accessions Committee Fund purchase, © Estate of Carlos Villa; photo: Katherine Du Tiel

Sheila Hicks, Rempart, 2016; private collection, © Sheila Hicks, courtesy the artist and galerie frank elbaz, Paris; photo: Oliver Roura

Suzanne Jackson, Hers and His, 2018; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, purchase, by exchange, through a gift of Peggy Guggenheim; © Suzanne Jackson, courtesy Ortuzar, New York; photo: Timothy Doyon

Carla Williams, Side, from the series How to Read Character, 1990, printed 2024; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Accessions Committee purchase, by exchange, through a gift of Michael D. Abrams; © Carla Williams; photo: Don Ross

Alejandro Cartagena, Carpoolers #21, from the series Carpoolers, 2011-12; © Alejandro Cartagena, courtesy the artist

KAWS, FAMILY, 2021; private collection; © KAWS