Visions of Unearthly Splendor with Stephen Kaltenbach and Jordan Stein @ SFMOMA, Jan 22, 2026
Posted January 8th, 2026 in Announcements, Co-Presentations, Events and Screenings, News / Events
Visions of Unearthly Splendor with Stephen Kaltenbach and Jordan Stein
6pm Thursday, January 22, 2026
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Free with RSVP
Related Exhibition: People Make This Place: SFAI Stories
Experience an evening of otherworldly, enchanting, and psychedelic California film and video works inspired by Stephen Kaltenbach: Portrait of My Father, a new publication by San Francisco curator and writer Jordan Stein. This event, with a special appearance by artist Stephen Kaltenbach, celebrates an illustrated oral history of his making Portrait of My Father (1972–79), a 20th-century masterpiece on permanent view at the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento. Blazing a bold new conceptual trail in the early 1970s, the artist traded his heady downtown New York art world for a rural Northern California barn, where he spent most of the decade painting this enormous — and enormously cosmic — portrait of his dying father. The eclectic program illuminates various subjects at play in the book, including resplendent visions, spiritual awakening, and the ineffable nature of human consciousness.
Stein introduces each film with a short reading and joins Kaltenbach in conversation after the screenings.
Visions of Unearthly Splendor is presented in collaboration with Canyon Cinema.
Films
Sausage City (Adam Beckett, 1974, 5.5 min., 16mm)
Your Move (Gene Beery, ca. 2008, 2 min., digital)
Letters (Dorothy Wiley, 1972, 11 min, 16mm-to-digital)
Thank You Jesus for the Eternal Present (Owen Land, 1973, 6 min., 16mm)
The White Rose (Bruce Conner, 1967, 7 min., 35mm)
Lonesome Cowboy (Toney W. Merritt, 1979, 30 sec., 16mm)
Invocation (Amy Halpern, 1982, 2 min., 16mm, silent)
About the Speakers
Jordan Stein is a curator and writer based in San Francisco. He is the author of Miyoko Ito: Heart of Hearts (Pre-Echo Press, 2024), a New York Times “Best Art Book of the Year,” Rip Tales: Jay DeFeo’s Estocada & Other Pieces (Soberscove Press, 2021), and most recently, Stephen Kaltenbach: Portrait of My Father (J&L Books, 2025). In 2017, he founded Cushion Works, an exhibition space in the Mission District that aims to link past and present through the varied presentation of critical — and often overlooked — artworks, histories, and ideas. He has independently organized exhibitions at the Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive, Artists Space, Yale Union, San Francisco City Hall, The Glass House, Matthew Marks Gallery, Fraenkel Gallery, and The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, where he formerly served as curator of special projects.
Sculptor, painter, and conceptual artist Stephen Kaltenbach is best known for his enigmatic time capsules — sealed metal cases with inscriptions, sometimes hinting at their hidden contents, sometimes directing their use. Kaltenbach’s interest in the relationship between the visible and the concealed and the determination of when an artwork becomes itself questions basic assumptions about the way art operates. Kaltenbach’s work has been exhibited at the Walker Art Center; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and the Whitney Museum of American Art. He was a 1979–80 Guggenheim fellow and his work is found in public collections around the world, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Kröller-Müller Museum in the Netherlands.
Accessibility Information
Accessibility accommodations such as American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation and assisted listening devices are available upon request 10 business days in advance. To request accommodations, please email publicengagement@sfmoma.org
