<![CDATA[Gawker: valleywag, sfmoma]]> http://tags.gawker.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/gawker.com.png <![CDATA[Gawker: valleywag, sfmoma]]> http://gawker.com/tag/valleywag/sfmoma http://gawker.com/tag/valleywag/sfmoma <![CDATA[Museum ejects Thomas Hawk over boob shot charge]]> Zooomr founder Andrew Peterson, aka Thomas Hawk, was walked out of San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art by security guards on Friday, adding to the lensman's history of run-ins with authority figures. Museum rules allow handheld non-flash photography in certain rooms, such as the main lobby. So what's the beef? Hawk says his large, professional-looking digital single lens reflex (DLSR) camera spooked the museum's director of visitor relations. But a commenter on local blog SFist claims to have seen Hawk shooting downshirts:

I was at the museum on Friday and saw this whole thing go down. Thomas Hawk's account of what happened is unabashedly one-sided. What he neglects to mention is that he was standing on a balcony with his camera pointed down, aiming directly into the shirt/cleavage of one of the female employees working at the museum. Simon Blint asked Thomas Hawk to stop taking photos in order to protect his staff from a creepy perv, not because he was using a dSLR or for whatever BS reason Thomas Hawk claims.

Seriously, that museum is photgraphed by visitors constantly; do you really think that Thomas Hawk was randomly, forcibly ejected for no reason at all?

Update: Hawk's best defense comes from a comment on Flickr: "Blint actually landed that accusation from the foyer, shouting it up to us, accusing us of looking down her shirt. From above, the ticket taker was just hair and neck."

(Photo by Renee Blodgett)

]]> http://gawker.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5035325&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[Google's Marissa Mayer appointed to board of local modern art museum]]> Marissa Mayer's high opinion of her own good taste will be getting that much more insufferable now that she can tell people that she's on the board of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Call it Mayer's latest attempt to play the role of Peggy Guggenheim. Thing is, Guggenheim actually collected contemporary art (and contemporary artists, if the rumored romances are to be believed). The press release names Sol Lewitt, Robert Bechtle and Robert Rauschenberg as Mayer's three favorites. Only Bechtle is still breathing — at age 76.

But throw enough money around and you, too, can pretend to have taste! Worked for the Gap's Donald Fisher, who's opening his own ironically named Contemporary Art Museum of the Presidio (or "CAMP") because he didn't want SFMOMA to meddle with his precious collection. No wonder Google chose the Gap building with its godawful Richard Serra sculpture for the company's newly opened San Francisco office. (Original photo by Steve Rhodes)

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