San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is defined by a massive, undulating white façade of fiberglass panels that rise from the street like a cliff. Established in nineteen thirty-five as the San Francisco Museum of Art, it was the first institution on the West Coast devoted solely to modern and contemporary work. For its first sixty years, the museum operated without a dedicated building, occupying the cramped fourth floor of the War Memorial Veterans Building in the Civic Center.