Image: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art will launch Jacob Hashimoto: 'Giant Arc' on August 22, 2026, according to a Berggruen Gallery announcement and SFMOMA exhibition page. The site-specific installation is described by the museum as the largest of Hashimoto’s career, and it will occupy the Roberts Family Gallery on Floor 1. The public can access the exhibition for free in that gallery, which SFMOMA identifies as admission-free.
The work is built from nearly 75,000 hand-built kites made of bamboo and Japanese paper, suspended together into a cloud canopy. SFMOMA says the installation will extend from floor to ceiling and wall to wall across the Roberts Family Gallery, and that visitors will be able to walk, sit, or lie beneath it. The museum also notes that the piece will be visible through two-story windows facing Howard Street, placing the installation in view of both museum visitors and passersby.
Berggruen Gallery’s announcement presents 'Giant Arc' as a landmark installation and says it opens at SFMOMA on August 22. The gallery’s email also cites a public celebration on August 20, 2026, before the installation opening. SFMOMA’s exhibition page lists a related event, 'Opening Celebration: Giant Arc by Jacob Hashimoto,' scheduled for Thursday, August 20, 2026, from 6 to 8 p.m.
Hashimoto, born in 1973 in Greeley, Colorado, studied at Carleton College and received his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1996. Berggruen Gallery describes his practice as combining sculpture, painting and installation through modular components such as bamboo-and-paper kites, model boats and astroturf-covered blocks. The gallery says his layered compositions reference video games, virtual environments and cosmology while remaining rooted in landscape-based abstraction, modernism and handcraft.
The artist has presented solo exhibitions and installations at a long list of museums and galleries internationally, including the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, San Jose Museum of Art, Tampa Museum of Art and Museo d’Arte Contemporanea di Roma, among others, according to Berggruen Gallery. SFMOMA’s presentation of 'Giant Arc' identifies support for the installation from Randi and Bob Fisher as lead support, with additional support from Eurie Kim and Jason Cheng, The Black Dog Private Foundation and Alexandria and Kevin Marchetti, and other named supporters.
Berggruen Gallery said it will present its first solo exhibition with Hashimoto in November 2026. In the meantime, the gallery is featuring the artist in 'Summer Highlights,' on view through August 27, 2026, alongside works including 'This ever-fragile balance' (2024), 'The Hashimoto Index II' (2018) and 'Love’s Great Mystery, Ontological and Absolute' (2017).
