CASE STUDY

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) initiated its Artist Identities Data Program (AIDP) in 2020 to collect and steward information about artists whose artworks have been acquired or exhibited by the institution. A collaboration between the curatorial and collections departments, the AIDP began as the Artist Identity Project to advance management of artist demographic data in an internal collections database. Two years later, the project was renamed and became an ongoing and farther-reaching program as part of the Museum’s efforts to broaden the scope of identity data related to living artists and to coordinate with identity data efforts happening in other SFMOMA departments and in other museums, libraries, and archives. In an effort to improve institutional accountability and transparency, the project launched a public, online dashboard to provide annual reports with anonymized demographic data—such as race, ethnicity, and gender—related to artists whose works the museum acquired or exhibited in the previous fiscal year. The data will support the museum’s representation of artists and their work in gallery texts, publications, programs, and other public-facing content.