The Floor: Fundamentals of Form.
Floor 5 belongs to three artists: Alexander Calder, Ellsworth Kelly, and Sol LeWitt. The exhibition is Calder, Kelly, LeWitt: Fundamentals of Form, part of Reimagined: The Fisher Collection at 10, and it shows about two dozen works by each. These are the three artists Doris and Donald Fisher collected in the greatest depth, so each gets a focused survey rather than a sample.
SFMOMA frames what joins them in a few words: architecture, seriality, and "opening the autonomous art object to elements of chance or rule-based systems." Put plainly: Calder let air move his sculptures, Kelly let what he saw in the world decide his shapes, and LeWitt wrote rules that other people carry out. All three work with the basics, line, color, and shape.
The Room Order
From the elevators, the rooms run in a loop:
Kelly West: four paintings of joined color panels.
Kelly South: the France years, from La Combe III (1951) to Spectrum I (1953).
Kelly North: large single forms, including Red White (1962) and the aluminum Curve IX.
Kelly Curves: shaped canvases, reliefs, and wood and metal curves.
LeWitt: wall structures, wall drawings, photographs of a cube, and white pyramids.
LeWitt Wall Drawing 273: one drawing across seven walls.
Open Cube space: Zig-Zag (1980) and Incomplete Open Cube 8/11.
City Gallery: LeWitt's Forms Derived from a Cube prints, and the Co-Lab, a hands-on studio for all ages.
Calder: seventeen works, from a wire portrait to the motorized Quattro Pendulati.
LeWitt's Hanging Structure #28C, a white lattice of open cubes about eleven feet tall, hangs on the landing behind the elevators.
Also on Floor 5
David Huffman's Portals (2024), a Bay Area Walls commission, covers a wall about 42 feet long. Olafur Eliasson's One-way colour tunnel (2007) filled the atrium bridge from August 1, 2022, to October 4, 2026, so it has just come down. The floor also has Cafe 5 and two sculpture terraces.
The posts below follow the walking order: two on Kelly, two on LeWitt, one on Calder, and one on Huffman.
Sources
Room contents and walking order come from SFMOMA's Fisher Collection access guide; dates, media, sizes, credit lines, and audio-guide quotes come from SFMOMA's collection pages. These are the pages opened while checking.
SFMOMA
Access guide: Floor 5 landing, Kelly West, Kelly South, Kelly North, Kelly Curves, LeWitt, Wall Drawing 273, Open Cube space, City Gallery, Co-Lab, Calder, landing, exiting Calder
Exhibition and features: Calder, Kelly, LeWitt: Fundamentals of Form, Ellsworth Kelly in San Francisco press release, The Artist Initiative with Ellsworth Kelly, Drawing with Instructions, David Huffman, Bay Area Walls, Olafur Eliasson, One-way colour tunnel
Artist pages: Ellsworth Kelly, Sol LeWitt, Alexander Calder
Kelly artworks: Window I, Kilometer Marker, White Relief, La Combe III, Red Yellow Blue White and Black with White Border, Spectrum I, Gaza, Wall, Red White, Black over Blue, Blue White, Red Green, Curve III, Curve IX, White Curves I, Diagonal with Curve I, Curve XXI, Blue Panel, Blue Green Black Red, Red Curves, Red on Red
LeWitt artworks: Wall Structure, Wall Drawing 1, Wall Drawing 1A, Wall Drawing 273, Wall Drawing 280, Wall Drawing 477, Wall Drawing 1247, Untitled (Cube)
Calder artworks: Aquarium, Constellation, Quattro Pendulati, 23 feuilles à l'écart, Untitled, 1949, Tower with Painting, Eighteen Numbered Black, Double Gong, Double Mushroom, Fishy, Big Fat Banana
Biography and context
Kelly: Wikipedia
LeWitt: Wikipedia, "Paragraphs on Conceptual Art" (text), Incomplete Open Cubes, Paula Cooper Gallery release, MASS MoCA, Wall Drawing 11
Calder: Wikipedia, Calder Foundation, Dr. Hans Cürlis, Calder Foundation timeline 1926–1930
Huffman: Wikipedia, CV, Jessica Silverman
Hedged, flagged, or left out
Double Gong (1953): the access guide lists it in the Calder room and the exhibition page features it, but its collection page says "Not on view at this time." Check before publishing.
Fish, Star and Crescent, the second untitled Calder, and the Hans Cürlis drawing have no dates in SFMOMA's online collection; the posts give none.
Which year Duchamp coined "mobile": Wikipedia says 1931, an SFMOMA audio guide says 1932. The post says "early 1930s."
When LeWitt moved to Italy: sources give the late 1970s and 1980. The post says so.
Fishy: the Bill Fisher audio says "in the 50s," which conflicts with the 1962 date; the post uses only the dining-room detail.
Huffman's Artadia Award: his CV says 2005, Wikipedia says 2006. The post uses the CV.
Why Kelly titled Gaza as he did, and what Incomplete Open Cube 8/11's numbers stand for exactly, could not be confirmed; neither is explained.
Olafur Eliasson's tunnel closed October 4, 2026, so it has no post. Huffman's Portals has no published closing date.