Sightglass Coffee & Cafe 5, Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco

I grew up in the Bay Area and “The City” has always meant San Francisco to me. Some things have changed there and some things have not. I can’t get used to the new skyline… but it’s high time I did. On a February 2018 visit, there was time to visit a museum cafe.

Names and Places

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has three signature sites where you can relax and absorb what you’ve seen in the galleries – as well as a small coffee kiosk that is just called ‘the coffee kiosk on Floor 2’. No name. Per their website. Someone ran out of creativity or energy. In a museum!

The places with actual names are Sightglass Coffee (a branch of a local coffee chain), Café 5, a counter-service restaurant for light meals in an airy glass wing, and In Situ, a Michelin-starred fine dining restaurant. (No, I didn’t go there. But it does have a cool name.)

I met an old friend at SFMOMA and we visited both Sightglass and Café 5 during our day at the museum.

Sightglass had an excellent brew and friendly baristas. “Every coffee is prepared right before your eyes for your enjoyment and sensory delight” – as their website says. I would expect nothing less in an art museum. We passed up the crowded photo gallery seating and found a table along the rail overlooking the Museum’s main atrium. An airy space always enhances my sensory delight in museum cafes.

Higher and Higher

After an appropriate amount of time viewing the galleries, it was time for refreshment again. We visited Café 5, up on the fifth of seven levels. It’s a long, narrow, space adjacent to the Sculpture Garden, with glass walls on both sides. The café offers a limited menu of “California-fusion fare” featuring seasonal ingredients. Along with local wines. We chose a Mediterranean plate of assorted hummus dips, chutneys and pita triangles.

Frozen in Time

While the California-fusion cuisine didn’t really stick in my mind – The Snowman did. I had come to San Francisco in February for several reasons – one was getting away from the snow in Minnesota. So I was amused to find a Snowman preserved in a glass case on a terrace.

The Snowman was first created in 1987 by Peter Fischli and David Weiss for a power plant commission (yes, the power plant wanted art in front!) in Saarbrucken, Germany. The artists decided their concept should be powered by the plant – to make more of a statement – and per Cara Manes, assistant curator of sculpture at New York’s MOMA, “the piece raises complex questions about climate change, both as a commentary on energy use as well as a contradiction, since the work itself could be seen as a contributor to global warming.”

In 2016 a second traveling Snowman was created that spent time at the Art Institute of Chicago, then at SFMOMA, where we saw him in 2018, and then on to New York’s Museum of Modern Art, where he has taken up residence in their Sculpture Garden. The “snow” is actually water continually condensing and freezing around a copper figure in the refrigerated case. He has retained his frosty smile where ever he has appeared. SF MOMA described the work as “exploring tensions between the ephemeral and permanent, and the natural and artificial…” when he debuted there.

An Artistic Mix

So, my visit was a complex tapestry of conversation with someone I have known for more than 50 years, coffee and its sensory delights, California-fusion fare, provocative artwork, and the ephemeral permanence of artificial snow in The City By The Bay.