The site-specific installation Fortuna and the Immortality Garden (Machine) by Kara Walker at SFMOMA marks the artist's most ambitious large-scale public project. On view through the spring of 2026, the installation is situated in the admission-free Roberts Family Gallery. Kvadrat has proudly sponsored 137 meters of Balboa, used to upholster built-in seating surrounding the central display area and as a backdrop for an expansive wall display.

This groundbreaking installation encourages its public to actively engage with both the inside and the outside of the gallery space.  Visitors and passersby can encounter a series of three display areas populated by mechanized sculptures. Organized by Eungie Joo, SFMOMA’s curator and head of contemporary art, with whom Walker has worked multiple times over the past 27 years, Fortuna and the Immortality Garden (Machine) is inspired by a wide range of sources.

Through Walker’s vision, these references unite to explore the global fear and loss of the COVID-19 pandemic, address the memorialization of trauma, the aims of technology, and how we might overcome contemporary societal ills. Automatons represent the human experience within a garden of black obsidian, a volcanic glass believed to repel negative energies and heal past traumas. The work creates an energetically charged space for reflection, healing, respite, and hope.

SFMOMA
151 Third St
San Francisco, CA 94103

July 1, 2025 - Spring, 2026

Monday –Tuesday, 10 am – 5 pm
Wednesday, closed
Thursday, 1 pm – 8 pm
Friday – Sunday, 10 am – 5 pm

Read more about the exhibition here

<sup>Kara Walker, Fortuna and the Immortality Garden (Machine), 2024 (installation view, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art); commissioned by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art;  © Kara Walker, courtesy Sikkema Jenkins & Co. and Sprüth Magers;

photo: Fredrik Nilsen Studio</sup>

About Kara Walker 

Kara Walker, a New York-based artist, is renowned for her explorations of race, gender, sexuality, and violence through silhouetted figures that have appeared in numerous exhibitions worldwide.

Born in Stockton, California, in 1969, she grew up in Atlanta, Georgia. Walker earned her BFA from the Atlanta College of Art (1991) and her MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design (1994). Her accolades include the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Achievement Award (1997) and the USA Eileen Harris Norton Fellowship (2008).

Her major exhibitions include Kara Walker: My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love and large-scale projects like A Subtlety (2014) and The Katastwóf Karavan (2017). In 2019, she created Fons Americanus for the Hyundai Commission at Tate Modern, a "counter-memorial" to the British Empire.

Walker’s work can be found in numerous museums and public collections, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Tate Gallery, London; the Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XXI Secolo (MAXXI), Rome; and Deutsche Bank, Frankfurt. 

About SFMOMA

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is one of the largest museums of modern and contemporary art in the United States and a thriving cultural center for the Bay Area. Their remarkable collection of painting, sculpture, photography, architecture, design, and media arts, is housed in an LEED Gold-certified building designed by the global architects Snøhetta and Mario Botta. In addition to the seven gallery floors, SFMOMA currently offers more than 45,000 square feet of free, art-filled public space open to all.