I dropped in on the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s “Now Playing” happenings, which the museum is presenting on thursday evenings in honor of its 75th anniversary. Evening programing at museums is all the rage at the moment — seems like almost every major institution around here from the Berkeley Art Museum to the Exploratorium is offering some sort of adult-oriented happening regularly.
I didn’t have much time, so I mostly skirted around the building to see what was going on. Besides the galleries themselves, the main cultural offerings were the screening of “Long Play: Bruce Conner and the Singles Collection” and a performance by the Los Angeles-based art band My Barbarian. People seemed particularly interested in the various free and for-pay food and drinks available at the museum. Up on the roof terrace, there was charcuterie and wine to be had. Various local purveyors of gourmet offerings had also set up shop on the ground floor. But the galleries seemed rather empty to me. Perhaps most attendees had come to see and be seen — there were a lot of beautiful people around. In a sense, they were the artwork last night.