Suzanne Jackson's Dreamlike Art Shaped by San Francisco

SFMOMA retrospective showcases 80+ works by the 81-year-old artist who says the city's "open atmosphere" and nature inspired her six decades of experimentation.

Published on Feb. 21, 2026

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Legendary artist Suzanne Jackson's first major museum retrospective, "Suzanne Jackson: What Is Love," is on view at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) through March 1. The exhibition features more than 80 of Jackson's color-drenched paintings, drawings, and sculptural installations from the 1960s to the present, shaped by her San Francisco childhood in the Bayview neighborhood. Though she left the Bay Area nearly 40 years ago, Jackson says San Francisco never left her, crediting the city's "open atmosphere" and closeness to nature with influencing her innovative use of color, light, and structure.

Why it matters

The SFMOMA retrospective caps a late-in-life resurgence of interest in Jackson's vivid, personally expressive work, which emphasizes her bohemian message of peace and love. Even when other Black artists in the 1960s and '70s were feeling pressure to be explicitly political, Jackson always felt that "love, peace and beauty were their own form of protest." The exhibition highlights how San Francisco trained Jackson's eye to see beauty everywhere, an outlook she believes the world still needs.

The details

Organized chronologically, "What Is Love" examines how Jackson's abiding fascination with materials, especially her experiments with acrylic's tactile, sculptural qualities and with light itself, have been near-constant influences. The exhibition features several of Jackson's signature works, including the 1981 painting "El Paradiso," which depicts two faces in silhouette caught in the moment before a kiss, surrounded by swirling color fields and tropical fauna. Jackson has also been experimenting with suspended "anti-canvases," sculptural hangings of acrylic paint that defy the expected properties of paint with their lack of a canvas backing.

  • Jackson's family moved to California from St. Louis when she was 9 months old, settling in the Bayview neighborhood of San Francisco.
  • Jackson's family moved to pre-statehood Alaska when she was 7, but she would return to the Bay Area at 17 to attend San Francisco State University.
  • "Suzanne Jackson: What Is Love" is on view at SFMOMA through Sunday, March 1, 2026.

The players

Suzanne Jackson

An 81-year-old artist who spent her childhood in San Francisco's Bayview neighborhood and whose color-drenched paintings, drawings, and sculptural installations from the 1960s to the present are the focus of the SFMOMA retrospective.

Jenny Gheith

The SFMOMA curator of painting and sculpture who spent five years planning the "Suzanne Jackson: What Is Love" exhibition after being wowed by Jackson's 1981 painting "El Paradiso" in New York in 2019.

Jerry Brown

The former California governor who appointed Jackson to serve on the California Arts Council.

Betye Saar

An artist whom Jackson gave one of her first shows when she ran a Los Angeles gallery.

Sonny Bono

The entertainer who commissioned Jackson's stunning 1975 wall-size diptych "Wind and Water."

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What they’re saying

“This city has been just constantly beautiful to me.”

— Suzanne Jackson, Artist (San Francisco Chronicle)

“I was blown away by so much of Suzanne's work when I first saw it, and I still am by her adventurous spirit of experimentation.”

— Jenny Gheith, SFMOMA Curator of Painting and Sculpture (San Francisco Chronicle)

“Love, peace and beauty were their own form of protest.”

— Suzanne Jackson, Artist (San Francisco Chronicle)

What’s next

After closing at SFMOMA on March 1, 2026, the "Suzanne Jackson: What Is Love" exhibition will travel to the Minneapolis Walker Art Center and then to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

The takeaway

Suzanne Jackson's SFMOMA retrospective showcases how the artist's San Francisco upbringing and its "open atmosphere" and closeness to nature shaped her six decades of innovative, color-drenched artwork that emphasizes a bohemian message of peace and love, proving that beauty can be a powerful form of protest.