Does absence make the heart grow fonder—or yonder? SFMOMA has been on the road, cohabiting and collaborating with neighboring venues, but it’s coming back home, bigger and better, and in the best ways. Art abounds on the ground floor, which is open to the public seven days a week through Labor Day, and features new entrances with access from every direction, and full admittance free to visitors 18 and younger. Leafy outdoor terraces and glades of glass expand the new space designed by architectural and branding firm Snøhetta who incorporated the 1995 Botta building into the design.

Inspiring this renovation is the gift of 260 works from the art compilation of Doris and Donald Fisher, who started buying prints and continued to collect seminal pieces of abstract art, as well as Pop, Minimal, Figurative, postwar German and British sculpture. Alexander Calder’s Motion Lab will transport visitors, opening along with the Campaign for Art, newly committed and gifted works ranging from Jackson Pollock to Jasper Johns. There is a gallery dedicated to photographer Diane Arbus, and work from video pioneer Nam June Paik, among other visual arts. The Pritzker Center for Photography opens as the largest exhibit and study space committed to photography. Dutch designer Claudy Jongstra’s huge textile mural traverses the wall of the fifth floor, and there’s more. Plan a day, plan a long visit, and as you’re looking up and around, give an extra nod to the Fishers, who acted upon “... a sense of responsibility with regard to the collection and to the artists.”

SFMOMA reopens to the public on May 14, 2016