Jacob Hashimoto's 75,000 Kites Transform SFMOMA's Roberts Family Gallery

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) presents 'Jacob Hashimoto: Giant Arc', a site-specific installation comprising nearly 75,000 handmade bamboo-and-paper kites. The work fills the museum's Roberts Family Gallery from floor to ceiling, creating an immersive environment that blends sculpture, design, craft, and nature. Hashimoto, who has developed kite-based installations for over three decades, incorporates patterns inspired by endemic Bay Area plants and flowers, including the city's dahlia. The title references the Giant Arc, a recently identified astronomical structure of galaxies that challenges the notion of a uniformly distributed universe. The installation includes kites dating from the late 1990s and early 2000s, whose aged papers contrast with newer elements. Construction involved months of sorting, repairing, and organizing kites, with three-dimensional modeling guiding placement and much of the assembly done by hand. The exhibition opens August 20, 2026, and is ongoing at SFMOMA, located at 151 Third Street, San Francisco, CA 94103. Hashimoto's work transforms thousands of fragile objects into a vast, fluid environment that shifts between order and chaos.