KAWS: FAMILY
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
November 15, 2025 – Spring 2026
Private collection
© KAWS
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) announces KAWS: FAMILY, a dazzling exploration of the multidimensional work of American artist KAWS. Beginning his career as a graffiti artist in Jersey City and Manhattan in the 1990s, KAWS has become renowned in the art world and beyond for his work in sculpture, painting, drawing, product design, large-scale public works and augmented reality. KAWS’s multidisciplinary practice is frequently centered around a cast of characters whose features are drawn from icons of American animation and pop culture. Recasting and reimagining his distinctive and relatable artistic lexicon, KAWS produces meticulous and exuberant works that investigate our connection to objects and one another. Organized by the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), KAWS: FAMILY will conclude its popular international tour at SFMOMA from November 15, 2025, to Spring 2026.
Featuring more than 100 artworks from the past three decades, the exhibition is organized as a series of encounters, with families of related artworks installed throughout SFMOMA’s Floor 4, including sculptures, bold and vibrant paintings, product collaborations and collectibles.
“KAWS has a distinct appeal to a vast array of audiences with his iconic characters and meticulous work in a stunning range of mediums,” said Christopher Bedford, Helen and Charles Schwab Director of SFMOMA. “The playful and contemplative works—a dynamic blend of his street art practice and formal education—will offer something for everyone when the exhibition opens at SFMOMA this fall.”
After spending his teenage years painting graffiti in the streets of Jersey City and Manhattan, KAWS eventually enrolled in the School of Visual Arts (SVA) where he received his BFA in illustration in 1996. Since that time, the artist has carved a unique position for himself in the art world, creating a globally recognized practice rooted in drawing, painting and sculpture, and amplified through collaborations with global fashion and design brands.
Working in bronze, wood, on paper and canvas, with vinyl toys and commercial products, KAWS’s art is populated by a cast of recurring figures inspired by his early practice of altering phone booth and bus shelter advertisements with his unique visual language. Originally painting his trademark skull and crossbones over the faces of models, he applied the same concept to altering iconic mascots and characters within the cultural zeitgeist. These figures are at once playful and serious, and in their various poses, forms and sizes, explore distinctly human emotions ranging from loneliness and anxiety to grief and joy. The exhibition takes its title and thematic jumping-off point from the work FAMILY (2021), a bronze sculpture featuring three recurring characters in KAWS’s work. The grouping includes a figure with crossed out eyes inspired by early American rubber hose animations named COMPANION; a bulbous figure named CHUM; and a fur-covered character named BFF—posed together in the style of a studio portrait.
Alongside sculptures, drawings and paintings, a selection of shoe designs, cereal boxes, album covers and a loveseat composed of plush toys made in collaboration with Brazilian design studio Estúdio Campana help showcase KAWS’s ongoing engagement with design and fashion brands and commitment to his work being widely accessible. These commercial works share the same dedication to bold color and strong lines seen in the artist’s paintings and sculptures and have helped KAWS gain a large and dedicated global following.
ARTIST KAWS
KAWS (Brian Donnelly) was born in Jersey City, New Jersey, in 1974. Over the last three decades he has built a successful career with work that consistently shows his formal agility as an artist, as well as his underlying wit, irreverence and affection for the current cultural moment. His practice possesses a sophisticated humor and thoughtful interplay with consumer products and collaborations with global brands, ranging from General Mills and Nike, to Supreme and Comme de Garçons. He often draws inspiration from and appropriates pop culture animations to form a unique artistic vocabulary for his work across a variety of media.
KAWS has exhibited extensively throughout the United States and internationally. Recent solo exhibitions of his work have been presented at institutions such as Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville; the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; The Parrish Art Museum, Watermill, New York; The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; the Serpentine Gallery, London, UK; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Brooklyn Museum, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Fire Station, Qatar Museums, Doha; Mori Arts Center Gallery, Tokyo; the Yuz Museum, Shanghai; and the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas. He is represented by Skarstedt Gallery and Galerie Max Hetzler.
CATALOGUE: KAWS: FAMILY is accompanied by a 156-page, fully illustrated hardcover catalogue co-published by the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) and Delmonico Books. Featuring an essay by Julian Cox, AGO deputy director and chief curator, and an interview with KAWS by Jim Shedden, AGO curator of special projects and director of publishing, the publication is available in person at the SFMOMA Museum Store or at museumstore.sfmoma.org.
KAWS: FAMILY is organized by the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) and curated by Julian Cox, deputy director & chief curator, AGO. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) presentation is curated by William Hernández Luege, curatorial associate, painting and sculpture, SFMOMA; and Daryl McCurdy, curatorial associate, architecture and design, SFMOMA.
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