San Francisco has a wonderful reason to look ahead: the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has announced a major retrospective of Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara, opening in fall 2027 in the museum’s Floor 7 galleries. It will be the first comprehensive survey of Nara’s work in Northern California.
The exhibition will bring together approximately 100 works spanning painting, drawing, sculpture, installation, sound and photography. Visitors will meet Nara’s beloved solitary figures – quietly vulnerable yet resolute, with searching gazes set against spare backdrops – in a presentation shaped by folk music, punk subculture and postwar visual culture, as well as the artist’s travels and humanitarian eye.
At its center will be the first international presentation of Voyage of the Moon (Resting Moon) (2006), a fairy-tale cottage recreating Nara’s drawing studio, crowned by a painted moon head keeping watch from its roof – an image rooted in his childhood fascination with the night sky. More recent paintings with layered, diffused surfaces and hand-formed sculptures full of touch and imperfection will complete the journey.
Curated by guest curator Mika Yoshitake with SFMOMA associate curator Nancy Lim, the show promises, in the museum’s words, to intrigue and inspire visitors of all ages. It is one to mark on the calendar now.
Photo: Yoshitomo Nara, Matryoshka, 2026; photo: Keita Saiki / SFMOMA
