The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) will feature the celebrated artist Sarah Sze’s most ambitious commission to date, opening on November 21, 2026.
Entitled Forever is Composed of Nows (2025), Sze’s site-specific, multi-sensory commission composed of three monumental paintings, a dynamic flow of video projections and rhythmic, pulsating soundscapes creates a fully immersive experience. Inspired by the ephemerality of images, the fragility of nature, and the passage of time, Sze’s work transforms SFMOMA’s admission-free Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Atrium into a shifting landscape where light, sound and movement intertwine.
The commission’s title, Forever is Composed of Nows, references American poet Emily Dickinson’s 19th-century poem. The written work resonates with Sze’s own meditation on time as a continuum of present moments, each adding to the memory of forever. This ethos is core to and woven into the whole of the commissioned work.
Integral to the commission is a commitment to inclusive design that creates a welcoming experience, with accessibility thoughtfully considered in every experiential component. SFMOMA and Sze have collaborated on the project with global inclusive experiential design firm, Prime Access Consulting (PAC), as part of the museum’s broader partnership with PAC, which was launched in 2022 to enhance accessibility across the institution. Bringing conversations about access into the early stages of the project’s development has resulted in a landmark commission that is multisensory and born accessible, with visual, sound and tactile elements actively integrated into the experience to engage a spectrum of visitors.
The installation begins on SFMOMA’s ground floor atrium with two 27-foot-tall paintings flanking the museum’s grand staircase that explore the very construction and decomposition of images as they form, dissolve and settle into memory. Sze’s work marries the museum’s architecture as she continues her investigation of image-making systems and images in flux.
Dickinson’s poem will be included in braille along handrails in visitor elevators, as well as on the stairway in the atrium. Streams of projections and an enveloping soundscape immerse visitors in the atrium and as they ascend to the Floor 3 landing where a third painting will be installed. As audiences move throughout the spaces, digital imagery and sounds of nature will be activated, engaging visitors in what Sze calls an “architecture of belonging.”
The constellation of analog and digital images will shift in scale throughout the various architectural spaces, creating live moments that respond to the viewers’ presence. The ever-changing flow of people will also alter the velocity and tenor of the audio-visual landscape,
Forever is Composed of Nows is the second time SFMOMA has commissioned Sze, the first being Things Fall Apart (2001) which now resides in the museum’s permanent collection.