Illuminate SF

Awe-Inspiring Light Art in San Francisco's SoMa Neighborhood

Daniel Libeskind, 2008

Permanent

36 diamond-shaped windows light the top floor of the metal cube known as the “Yud” in the Contemporary Jewish Museum (CJM). Once inside, visitors see how the soaring walls and windows carve the space with sunlight. The museum’s vision of the relationship between tradition and innovation, legacy and invention, is perfectly embodied in the “Yud” and the building itself, one of the most intriguing designs by the studio led by architect Daniel Libeskind. Inspired by the phrase “L’Chaim,” meaning “To Life,” Libeskind let the Hebrew letters that spell “chai,” “chet” and “yud” guide the form of the building.

Best Viewing: The shape overlooking Yerba Buena Lane is the “Yud.” After dark, stand in the museum's entrance plaza to take in the dramatic light emanating from the diamond-shaped windows. Access the interior during museum operating hours with paid admission.

Daniel Libeskind, 2008

Permanent

PaRDeS is a light installation embedded in the wall of the Grand Lobby at the Contemporary Jewish Museum (CJM). Its stylized Hebrew letters translate as “orchard;” the connotation is that the orchard can be found on the other side of the wall. Metaphorically, the sweetness—or fruit—of learning and art can be found inside the museum.

Best Viewing: PaRDes can be viewed upon entering the Grand Lobby, during museum hours.

Dave Lane, 2015

Permanent

Lamp of the Covenant is a massive, 90-foot long sculpture that weighs 12,000 pounds. The first major artwork to be commissioned by the Contemporary Jewish Museum (CJM), Dave Lane's monumental work is suspended high over the heads of visitors in the museum’s soaring lobby space. The artwork’s enormous steel oval is comprised of antique found objects: world globes, light bulbs, tools such as nineteenth century apple peelers and blow torches, and various other materials that suggest the unfolding marvels of the cosmos. “Lamp of the Covenant” refers to the lamp that always hangs over the altar in the synagogue, a light that represents divine presence in the room; the covenant is the relationship between Judaism and God. By naming his work Lamp of the Covenant, the artist offers a tangible, very human sign of the presence of the miraculous, as it penetrates our mundane reality, utilizing the lamp as a sign of wonder; and the spiritual, that is always just over our heads as we pursue our everyday lives.

Best Viewing: Lamp of the Covenant can be seen above the Grand Lobby, during museum hours.

Taravat Talepasand, 2022

Permanent

Taravat Talepasand's “Peace in the Middle East” has returned as a permanent installation in YBCA's Grand Lobby. Hung from the ceiling, this intricate neon artwork, featuring the word "peace" in Farsi, explores the cultural taboos that reflect on gender and political authority through Talepasand's lens as an Iranian-American woman.

Best Viewing: Step inside any time that the YBCA is open (Thursday - Sunday, Noon - 6 p.m.)

Dan Flavin, 1969

Permanent

Few artists can boast having explored a single medium—and an unusual one at that—as tenaciously and consistently as Dan Flavin with his signature fluorescent light tubes. His “"monument" for V. Tatlin” at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is one of 39 "monuments" to Vladimir Tatlin (1885 - 1953) created between 1964 and 1990, because the Russian artist's ambitious but unrealized project to unite art and technology was of particular interest to Flavin. This stepped arrangement of cool, white, fluorescent light is one of his many light "propositions," made up of standardized, commercially available materials much like the readymades by Marcel Duchamp that he admired.

Best Viewing: SFMOMA, Floor 5, “Pop, Minimal, and Figurative Arts: The Fisher Collection”.

Dan Flavin, 1987

Permanent

The color and glow that emanates from “untitled (in honor of Leo at the 30th anniversary of his gallery)” at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) confirms that light artist Dan Flavin was a master at transforming spaces and creating rich environments with minimal materials. This piece features nearly the full range of Flavin's colored lamps, with ten eight-foot elements in red, pink, yellow, blue, and green. The light creates an exuberant and immersive homage to the inimitable Leo Castelli, the art dealer who championed Flavin's work for nearly thirty years.

Best Viewing: SFMOMA, Floor 5, “Pop, Minimal, and Figurative Arts: The Fisher Collection.”

Bruce Nauman,

Bruce Nauman made his very first neon wall relief in 1966, which jumpstarted his life long career as a light artist. His pieces are oftem relatively unorthodox, and engage the complexity and absurdity of language by using bright lights that appear at first glance to be bright and festive. Throughout his career, Nauman has avoided engaging in a recognizable and characteristic style, and works to expose the multiplicity of meaning.

Lisa Gemmiti, 2011

Permanent

Architects for the interior of the W Hotel designed the modern lobby with a San Francisco theme, and they needed a sculptural piece to represent the city at night. Using photographs as inspiration, Lisa Gemmiti and her team sculpted “San Francisco at Night: Model Art Map” with precision and artistic license. The topography was machined with a 2.5x vertical exaggeration to emphasize the changes in grade. 2,000 LEDs in four colors were installed on four circuits in order to set the intensity of each circuit in place. A little fun was added by using red LEDs to represent points of interest in San Francisco, and a single purple LED designated the W Hotel.

Best Viewing: Walk in the Howard Street entrance to view this piece behind the illuminated check-in desks. It's installed on the wall against patterned, perforated panels that represent San Francisco's celebrated fog.

MADLAB, 2013

Permanent

“Lumina” is a vibrant, otherworldly light sculpture, a lustrous mass reminiscent of bioluminescent jellyfish, cosmic star clouds, and the brain’s neural networks. The sculpture emanates a sense of mystery as its translucent fiberglass and fiber optic strands draw hotel guests to its vivid core. The 27-foot sculpture is handcast in clear surfboard resin and body glitter to achieve a luminous sheen. Its large sheaths seam together to create a 15-foot-wide chamber in which more than 7,000 fiber optic strands were threaded and hand knotted before cascading the full length of the sculpture’s interior. (A staggering 22 miles of fiber optic strands were used. That’s enough to stretch across the Golden Gate Bridge thirteen times!)

Best Viewing: Look up once inside the hotel’s three-story entrance at the corner of Third and Howard Streets.

Leo Villarreal, 2019

Permanent

This 100-foot pedestrian bridge towering over Howard Street connects the two sides of The Moscone Center with a seemingly infinite array of lights. “Point Cloud” is made of 858 steel rods suspended from the roof of the bridge. Each of the 28,288 LED bulbs are individually programmed, changing 30 times per second into shades of blue, yellow, orange, pink, and lavender. Walk across the bridge to experience this fully immersive installation, or observe this visual masterpiece from afar.

Best Viewing: Nighttime from the corner of Howard and Third streets.

Jenny Holzer, 2018

Permanent

In the gleaming, sunlit rotunda of the Salesforce Transit Center, Jenny Holzer's "White Light" inspires commuters and visitors with its words of wisdom. The 182-foot-long LED screen displays the words of more than 40 writers for varying amounts of time. Some are fleeting, 45 second appearances. Others linger for up to two hours.

Best Viewing: "White Light" is completely enclosed within the Salesforce Transit Center, meaning you can view it rain or shine, day or night.

Jim Campbell, 2018

Permanent

At the top of the Salesforce Tower, the tallest building west of the Mississippi, you'll find "Day for Night," a massive and incredibly versatile light art installation by Jim Campbell. The top of the tower has been sheathed in 11,000 lights and video screens that allow daily scenes of city life to be displayed all night long.

Best Viewing: Hailed as the tallest public art installation in the country, "Day for Night" is visible from almost anywhere in San Francisco.