San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA)

The Contemporary Works Collection are located on the fourth and fifth floors of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

There is an impressive Media Arts Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

The Paul Klee Gallery at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has art from the Swiss painter who defies characterization. Klee who lived from 1879 till 1940 was an influential modern artist expelled from Germany by the Nazi's in 1933.

Art from Europe and the USA

The museum's permanent collections now contain works by nearly every important modern European and American artist. But as far as European art is concerned, there is no real comparison with the Museum of Modern Art in New York either in terms of quantity or quality.

Henri Matisse is particularly well represented, with nine paintings. George Braque's wonderful masterpiece "Le Guéridon" can also be seen. In 1980 the Josef Albers collection was greatly enhanced by the gift of seven more works. Among the German artists are Max Ernst, George Grosz, Hans Harting, Karl Hofer, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Franz Marc, Max Pechstein, Hans Purrmann, Kurt Schwitters and Fritz Winter. There are works by the Russian artists Alexej Jawlensky and Wassily Kandinsky. As for the French, the most notable are Pierre Bonnard, Paul Cézanne, Jean Dubuffet, Fernand Léger, Camille Pisarro and George Rouault. There are also works by the Spanish artists Joan Mirö and Pablo Picasso.

Sculpture

The museum possesses works by the sculptors Alexander Archipenko, Hans Arp, Marino Marini and Henry Moore.

Avant-garde

As well as the American artists mentioned above, the museum exhibits the work of many others who have caught the public eye in the last few decades; they include Stuart Davis, Jim Dine, Helen Frankenthaler, Arshile Gorky, Adolphe Gottlieb, Robert Indiana, Elsworth Kelly, William de Kooning, Kenneth Noland, Georgia O'Keeffe, Claes Oldenburg, Ad Reinhardt, Frank Stella and Mark Tobey.

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has a large collection of photographs, including original prints by Ansel Adams, a photographer who died in 1984.