31. Flight 401 was the plane I mentioned that went down in the Florida Everglades in 1972.
32. There were human survivors of that crash, but also parts of the plane itself were salvaged and reused.
33. In 1974, Airport 1975 was released (pictured below). This was the first sequel to the successful 1970 film Airport. It starred Karen Black as a stewardess who is forced to pilot a Boeing 747 after the flight crew are all either killed or injured severely in a head-on crash with a twin-engine piston aircraft.
34. Encouraged by the success of the Airport films, there will be two made-for-television films created about Flight 401. Crash will star William Shatner and will focus on the crash and the investigation that followed. The other, shown here in its entirety, focuses on the sightings of the ghost of the pilot on subsequent Eastern Airlines flights. This later film, The Ghost of Flight 401, is directed by Steven Hilliard Stern and stars Ernest Borgnine, Gary Lockwood, Tina Chen, and Kim Basinger.
35. Both films about Flight 401 will first air in 1978.
36. In 1976, Karen Black plays a kidnapper in Family Plot. She can’t know it yet, but it will be Alfred Hitchcock’s last film.
37. Black also acts (in this year) alongside screen legend Bette Davis in Burnt Offerings, a film about a house that rejuvenates itself by means of its occupants. This is the first film to be shot at the historic Dunsmuir House in Oakland. The space will later be mostly rented out for wedding parties, with no mention of the seventies horror film on their promotional website.

<i>Airport 75</i> (1974), featuring Helen Reddy (l) and Linda Blair (r)

Meredith Nguyen and Brit Hutchison

SFMOMA’s Schwab Room was to the gills with representatives of San Francisco’s culinary pioneers this past Friday, May 31, for The Kitchen Sisters’ The Making of a Charitable Food Movement, coordinated by Mission Chinese Food and Sharetable.org, and featuring presentations and sample bites from La Cocina, Tartine, and Flour + Water, among other local favorites. Organized around the idea that food can be a powerful binding force in the community, the event benefited the Food Bank, whose mission is to end hunger and which serves food to over 200,000 people in need each year in San Francisco and Marin counties. I spoke to the Food Bank’s Brit Hutchison and Meredith Nguyen.

When you’re not working at the Food Bank, what do you make?

Brit Hutchison: I do a lot of cooking. The last thing I made was sugar-free strawberry-rhubarb pie. It turned out really well. I used agave syrup because I’m trying to do more sugar-free dessert recipes.

Meredith Nguyen: I have a lifestyle blog and I do a bit of crafting, sewing, and knitting.

Do you collect anything?

BH: Animals! [laughs] No, not really. I collect strange knickknacks from my family, who like to buy them for me.

MN: I collect green things. Green’s my favorite color.

If you could spend an afternoon with anyone, living or dead, who would it be?

BH: My grandmother on my dad’s side, because I never met her.

MN: Jorge Luis Borges. I love him, I’ve studied a lot of his work, and I think he’s fascinating.

What is in your refrigerator right now?

BH: Vegetables and cheese. I also save the tops of my carrots because I’m starting to learn how to make pesto with carrot tops. I try to use the whole vegetable.

MN: Wine, champagne, and pizza.

What is your favorite tool?

BH: Scissors! They’re useful for everything, even cutting pizza.

MN: My favorite tool is definitely knitting needles. You can make all kinds of things with them.

Felix Gonzalez-Torres, “Untitled”, 1992/1993

We’re out of the building and into the street. Open Space will still be here! SFMOMA’s on the Go . . .

David Ireland, <i>South China Chairs</i>, 1979

We hope you’ll come count down with us, but you can always follow my countdown series here.

NPR’s Jennifer Ferro and Kitchen Sister Davia Nelson

Bringing you stories of Bay Area craftspeople and pioneers, from the makers of violins to jars of jam to the queer car service, Homobile, The Kitchen Sisters are Davia Nelson and Nikki Silva, radio producers and collaborators since they first met in 1979. The pair are currently hosting The Making Of… at SFMOMA, part of the museum’s four-day Countdown Celebration. I chatted with Davia Nelson and her friend and colleague Jennifer Ferro, president and general manager of NPR’s flagship station for Southern California, KCRW, which regularly airs the Kitchen Sisters.

What do you make when you’re not making radio shows?

Davia Nelson: I like to make river trips. I have a tradition with a bunch of girlfriends and this will be our thirtieth annual river trip. We go river rafting for a week every year. We’ve been to the Rogue River in Oregon, the Salmon River in Idaho, Cataract Canyon in Utah, and the Yampa and the Gates of Lodore [in Colorado].

Jennifer Ferro: I like to make really great passes when I play soccer!

Do you collect anything?

DN: I collect sugar. I’ve been collecting tubes and cubes and packets since I was five; I like to look at the changing world through the perspective of sugar packets. Oh, and lipstick. They say the average woman will die with a pound of lipstick in her stomach and I think I’ll have five!

If you could spend an afternoon with anyone, living or dead, who would it be?

DN: Sam and Becky Phillips, who have both died. Sam Phillips started Sun Studios and the Memphis Reporting Service; he discovered Elvis Presley, Roy Orbison, and Jerry Lee Lewis, and he also founded the first all-girl radio station in the world for his wife, Becky. I met them when we were doing the Lost & Found Sound series and they changed my life. They were such sonic pioneers and I miss them.

JF: I would hang out with Nancy Pelosi, Eleanor Roosevelt, and my Italian grandmother, who I never got to meet. I would want to ask her what it was like coming to America on a ship, not knowing anything, not speaking the language, and not having any money.

If you could have any artwork or object in the world, what would it be?

DN: I just saw Ann Hamilton’s installation at the Armory in New York. That’s what I would want in my home, with the swings and the speakers and the pigeons—only it’s the size of an entire armory.

JF: I want Yves Klein’s Blue.

What is your favorite tool?

DN: A microphone.

JF: My hands!

Lauren DiCioccio

Founded in 2011 by Bay Area arts patron Ann Hatch, The Workshop Residence is based in San Francisco’s Dogpatch neighborhood and hosts eight individual artists—four local, four international—per year. The for-profit program pairs its resident artists with local factories or visiting artisans in order to design and make locally manufactured, affordable, and functional products. From linen napkins to silk scarves and reusable trompe l’oeil tote bags, the resulting products are sold in-store, online, and through various other outlets. I chatted with textile artist Lauren DiCioccio, who was in residence at the Workshop in March 2012; you can find her in SFMOMA’s atrium selling her wares via the Workshop Residence pop-up stand today, Friday May 31!

What do you make when you’re not making art?

I spend so much time making art that when I’m not doing that, I want to go on walks. I make exercise!

Do you collect anything?

Oh, I collect a lot of things. For one of my projects represented here I collected hundreds and hundreds of plastic shopping bags. In 2007 when San Francisco implemented its plastic bag ban, I wanted to make a series of artworks about it because my work deals with obsolescing objects of day-to-day life. So I began collecting plastic bags to recreate them in hand embroidery on organza. Once I started telling people I was collecting, people loved to ship me bags and bags and bags.

If you could spend an afternoon with anyone, living or dead, who would it be?

I would just like to spend an afternoon with my family. I have a twin sister who lives on the outer banks of North Carolina. I’d be more than happy to spend an afternoon with her!

What would I find in your refrigerator right now?

Hummus, a lot of hummus. And aioli.

What is your favorite tool?

Right now, a sewing needle.

Henri Matisse,<i> Marguerite in Three Poses</i>, 1906

Bruce Conner, <i>THREE SCREEN RAY</i>, 2006

Jeff Benedetto, <i>Three Sconces</i>, 1988

Follow my countdown series here.

Ryan Sebastian and Wesley Moots

The Treatbot Ice Cream Karaoke Truck trades in—yup!—ice cream and karaoke. Based in the San Jose area, they’ll serve you up a scoop of Eastside Horchata or Mango Ice and throw in the opportunity to belt out your tune of choice to whoever’s listening. Today, Thursday, May 30, and tomorrow, Friday, May 31, they’re parked outside SFMOMA on Third Street as part of the museumwide Countdown Celebration. I chatted with the team behind the truck: founder and owner Ryan Sebastian and driver Wesley Moots.

If you could have any artwork or object in the world, what would it be?

Ryan Sebastian: Well, this couldn’t fit in my home, but the remaining skeleton structure of Hangar One in Mountain View is my favorite building. It’s been deconstructed because of lead issues, but I think it’s a very powerful statement. Or if someone had built a real version of the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey, that would be amazing to have.

Wesley Moots: I’m a really big Rembrandt fan, so something by him.

What’s in your refrigerator right now?

RS: We have some eggs from the chickens and ducks in our backyard; we have a miniature farm out there. My wife’s a chef so there’s always stuff in the fridge I’ve never even heard of.

WM: Fresh fruits and vegetables, mustard, hot sauce, more hot sauce, and a lot of tea.

What is your favorite tool?

RS: You know, I really love my iPhone. Being able to run a business on the go with a tool like that is enormously helpful.

WM: I’m a big fan of the adjustable wrench, just because of how many different uses you can get out of it, and if you get really angry, it works as a hammer!

What is your go-to karaoke song?

RS: If I’m lacking in confidence then I would say Wonderful Tonight by Eric Clapton because it’s easy, but I really like Achy Breaky Heart by Billy Ray Cyrus. That’s a great one.

WM: Folsom Prison Blues by Johnny Cash.

What should I ask you?

RS: A lot of people ask me if I was on some sort of substance when we thought up the Karaoke Ice Cream Truck and the answer is, actually, no. It was the result of a lot of long walks and talks with my wife, and I think it’s really the natural outcome of our interests.

WM: Where to get something good to eat in San Jose. Billy Berk’s makes a fantastic steak.

Sarah Stein diagram by Adam Machacek. Click image to enlarge. Click here to view interactive Haas Bequest diagram.

Henri Matisse, <i>Portrait de Sarah Stein (Portrait of Sarah Stein)</i>, 1916

Asked to describe Sarah Stein in 1979, Elise S. Haas presented her as a “very intuitive, perceptive, remarkable woman.” She then turned to Matisse’s renderings of his great patron, friend, and student to do the rest: “She was—well, I think all her personality is revealed in the portrait Matisse did of her. . . . The first sketch he made of her . . . is a perfect likeness. Then he transformed this into the woman she really was. I think it is one of the greatest portraits of this century.”

Of the many great art patrons Elise emulated in the building of her collection, Sarah Stein was among her most formative influences. Their friendship was perhaps unexpected to some. Elise was quick to point out that they were of different generations and that Stein was closer in age to her mother, Rosalie Meyer Stern. But despite their age difference, Elise perceived the importance of Sarah’s collection in its full force, believing in its special contribution both to the history of Modernism and to the history of modern art patronage on the West Coast. She also saw in Stein an uncommonly generous person who, like Elise herself in later years, practiced art in addition to collecting it.

Pablo Picasso, <i>Tête de trois quarts (Head in Three-Quarter View)</i>, 1907

Having sparked a friendship with Sarah in 1938, Elise became the primary architect of a plan to bring the most important artworks from her collection to SFMOMA. Following Stein’s death in 1953, Elise and Chicago businessman and collector Nathan Cummings established the Sarah and Michael Stein Memorial Collection. Together, she and Cummings respectively brought Matisse’s portraits of Sarah and Michael Stein to SFMOMA, preserving the only instance of double portraiture in the artist’s career. A few years later, Walter and Elise Haas presented our museum with Matisse’s study for the portrait of Sarah Stein in graphite on paper.

Through her relationship with Sarah Stein, Mrs. Haas brought to SFMOMA some of the finest Matisse paintings from the artist’s crucial years between 1905 and 1907. The first work she acquired from Stein was a fauve landscape, the Study for Le Bonheur de vivre (“The Joy of Life”), a work that ties into Haas’s appreciation of lyricism and epitomizes Matisse’s ability to use color to ignite an emotive response from viewers. Later, in January 1948, she acquired the jewel of the collection, Femme au chapeau (1905). Elise brought the painting to her home on a week-long “test drive” to make sure she was confident in the purchase, and it remained in her collection for over fifty years.

Henri Matisse, <i>Femme au chapeau</i> (Woman with a Hat), 1905

One of the most iconic portraits of the twentieth century, Femme au chapeau was purchased by Leo Stein, Sarah’s brother-in-law, after its debut in Paris in the fall of 1905. Leo described this picture as a work that “made everyone laugh except a few who got mad about it.” And he admitted that even an experienced collector like himself “needed a few days to get over the unpleasantness of the putting on of the paint.” Responses to the chaotic brushwork and riotous palette eventually mellowed, of course. To Mrs. Haas, the painting’s cacophonous color was refreshing. “It’s like a cocktail,” she said. “When I’m tired, I sit and look at it, and it revives me. It has such vitality to it.” During a visit with Matisse in the south of France toward the end of the artist’s life, Mrs. Haas’s exchanges with the artist led her to believe he still considered it among his greatest works.

Sarah Stein’s presence is felt throughout the Haas collection, and not only in its most spectacular works. Attentive viewers will see that Femme s’inclinant (1906–7), a graceful ink-on-paper drawing, bears not only Matisse’s signature (in the lower right) but also an inscription in Stein’s hand: “To Elise from Sarah with love.” The note was added when Mrs. Haas took possession of the drawing in the 1940s. As Stein does here, Matisse often inscribed works on paper to their recipients. The gesture appears two other times in this exhibition. In the Study for Portrait of Sarah Stein (1916), the dedication in the lower right reads “a Mad[am]e Michel Stein/homage respectueux/Henri Matisse 1916.” And in Fairy in a Luminous Hat, Souvenir of Mallarmé (1933), an inscription in Matisse’s hand, “à Sarah & Michel Stein/affectueusement,” is written at the lower left.

Henri Matisse, <i>Femme s’inclinant (Woman Leaning)</i>, 1906-1907

I began this series of posts as an attempt to place the works from the Haas bequest within a wider set of reference points in hopes of generating new thoughts about them, and as a way of saying thank you to Mrs. Haas for giving us so much to celebrate. Over the course of working with the Haas bequest, its holdings took on new identities—they remained great objects but also became markers of hard-won negotiations and heartfelt relationships. The bequest, in that sense, is not only a gift of art but also a record of human exchange preserved in objects. Elise has been the primary figure, connecting the individuals in each of the four posts over the past two weeks. But she was rarely the purveyor of a solitary viewpoint. Elise Haas collected. And the result of that effort was a body of work that spoke for a larger community, one that spanned generations and continents. Thanks to her, their works have become our works.

Caitlin Haskell is SFMOMA assistant curator of painting and sculpture.

After collaborating on several projects, graphic designers Adam Macháček, Sébastien Bohner, Petr Bosák and Robert Jansa (formerly Welcometo.as and Advancedesign.org) started a new partnership called 2011 Designers, with the conceit that the name will change annually (www.2013designers.com). They have engineered a process of working together online while in separate locations – their studios being located in Berkeley, California; Lausanne, Switzerland; and Prague, Czech Republic. Their work includes printed publications, exhibition design, type, posters, and illustration, for clients mostly in the field of culture.

Further Reading on Sarah Stein:
Janet Bishop, Cécile Debray, Rebecca Rabinow et al. The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso and the Parisian Avant-Garde (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011).

Follow the Currents Within a Collection: An Alternative History of the Elise S. Haas Bequest series here.