At 81, Artist Suzanne Jackson Finally Gets the Major Museum Retrospective She Deserves

Off the heels of this survey—the first European exhibition dedicated to the artist—Jackson’s first major museum retrospective has just opened at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA). Titled “Suzanne Jackson: What Is Love,” the show is co-organized with the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, where it will travel in spring 2026 before concluding at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. Featuring more than 80 works, the exhibition is organized chronologically, following Jackson’s singular life and career across coasts and myriad art forms, from dance and theater design to painting and sculpture.

“The past five years Ortuzar gallery has had me all over the world and places I never expected to be. When I was in art school at San Francisco State College [now University], we were taught that one wouldn’t receive all this wonderful attention until you became my age, and the work is mature enough,” Jackson, as humble and gracious as she is endearing and self-assured, tells Vogue. “I don’t believe that I’m the age that I am right now.”

Jackson calls the show, which was five years in the making, a “gift”: “San Francisco is my city. My parents brought me here when I was nine months old, and it’s where I had my first art classes in college. It also makes me really proud because this is the place where my parents excelled.” During the Great Migration, Jackson’s parents moved from Saint Louis to San Francisco, where they were active in their community. Jackson’s father was a realtor, as well as a trolley and cable car driver, while her mother was a seamstress who also had a penny candy store.

When she was eight, Jackson’s family moved to pre-statehood Fairbanks, Alaska, whose wild landscape left a lasting impression on her, ultimately informing both her painterly subjects and her lifelong devotion to environmentalism. In 1961 she returned to San Francisco for college, where she majored in painting, minored in drama and dance, and did coursework in scenic design and acting. She also studied with Pacific Ballet during this time and modeled professionally.