After three years of renovations, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is reopening on May 14. The new SFMOMA is gleaming white and twice as large as its boxy brown predecessor. It’s in no danger of being dwarfed, even among the South of Market neighborhood’s collection of rising towers.

The latest chapter in the history of SFMOMA is defined by power and wealth. It’s a strange contrast with the first chapter of that history, which began just a few years after the 1906 earthquake reduced the city to rubble.

A group of civic elites known as the San Francisco Art Association decided to create a museum dedicated to contemporary artwork. Their first museum, which opened in 1916, folded after a decade. But in 1935 they succeeded in founding the San Francisco Museum of Art.

Grace McCann Morley, its first director, found herself leading a museum that from its inception was plagued by troubles. Unlike the de Young Museum or the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, it was privately funded, and those funds were scarce.

The museum was also housed on the cramped fourth floor of the War Memorial Veterans Building, not an ideal location, according to SFMOMA Deputy Director Ruth Berson.

“It had no street presence whatsoever — you couldn’t just walk into the lobby of the building, you had to take an elevator to get there,” Berson said. “The other thing was that the spaces were never intended to be galleries, so they didn’t have the proportions (for exhibits) that one would have preferred.”

Morley was one of the museum’s first assets. Described by Berson as a “dynamo,” Morley quickly set about transforming the museum into a hot spot for contemporary art. In one of her first feats, Morley helped arrange for the mammoth 1934 Carnegie International, European Section, U.S. Selections exhibitions to be shipped across the United States — a logistical nightmare in the age of trains.

Over the next two decades, Morley and the Trustees organized exhibitions for well-known artists and emerging talents, including Ansel Adams, Alfred Stieglitz and Henri Matisse. Berson also noted that the museum gave Jackson Pollock his first solo exhibition in 1945.

The outbreak of World War II influenced much of Morley’s administration. In 1939, the museum arranged for an exhibition titled “Twentieth Century German Art (Banned)” that featured “degenerate” artwork banned in Nazi Germany. Throughout the war, Morley sought out local artists with useful skills to contribute to the war effort, and in 1945, the museum temporarily relocated to a downtown store so the building could host the United Nations’ charter meeting.

At the end of the war, Morley began working for UNESCO, where she founded the International Council of Museums. Her work with these organizations eventually forced Morley to leave the museum in 1958. But Berson said she left behind an impressive legacy.

“She accepted photography into the collection at a very early stage,” Berson said. “Her first architecture exhibition was in 1940, way before anybody was thinking about that.”

Morley’s replacement, George Culler, inherited a museum with greater resources, which he focused largely on education and outreach. Among the programs that were funded during his administration was “Insights,” which inspired bizarre experimental art like “Snowjob,” a performance piece by Bonnie Sherk that involved dumping 2 tons of snow in downtown San Francisco.

When Gerald Nordland took the reins in 1966, the nation and the Bay Area were in the midst of radical cultural and political transformations. Nordland was determined to incorporate new trends by organizing shows that pushed the boundaries of art.

Some of these exhibitions proved to be quite memorable, like a 1969 showing of Jay DeFeo’s “The Rose,” a 2,300-pound painting so difficult to transport that it inspired a documentary. Later that year, the museum became the only West Coast museum to host the controversial exhibit “Contemporary Black Artists.”

In 1970, the museum resurrected its film program. Although it was shuttered eight years later because of financial strains, the program made a splash with its first exhibition, a floating TV-sculpture called “The Videola” by Don Hallock and several other artists.

Nordland also oversaw a period of growing prestige for the museum. In 1972, the museum expanded into the third floor of the Veterans Building. It also established the Museum Intercommunity Exchange to foster greater collaboration with its peers in New York; Washington, D.C.; and Europe.

Henry Hopkins became the museum’s director in 1974. Today, Hopkins is probably best remembered for adding the word “modern” in 1975 to the name of the museum. But during his 12 years as director, he also led SFMOMA through a period of explosive growth, creating new departments and enlarging its collections.

Hopkins organized a record number of shows that relied solely on SFMOMA’s collection, which had swollen with acquisitions over the previous decade. Hopkins, who particularly liked Abstract Expressionists, was instrumental in securing artwork by Clyfford Still and Philip Guston.

Also during Hopkins’ administration, SFMOMA established its first department of photography in 1980, and in 1983 it created the department of architecture and design — the first of its kind on the West Coast.

These enhancements increased the prestige of SFMOMA, but Hopkins was never satisfied with the museum’s location. In a 1980 interview for the Archives of American Art, he recalled visiting the museum before he was director and wishing the staff had the funds to buy 500 gallons of white paint to freshen up the “tawdry” building.

In 1987, the Museum of Contemporary Art opened in Los Angeles, ending SFMOMA’s unofficial status as California’s premier contemporary art museum. The Board of Trustees and its new director, John Lane, began searching for a new home for the museum. They soon set their sights on Third Street in the South of Market area.

“South of Market was a little bit of a dicey neighborhood back in the day,” Berson said, recalling that the museum’s neighbor was an empty parking lot surrounded by chain-link fence.

But the move paid off. When SFMOMA reopened in 1995 in a new building designed by the Swiss architect Mario Botta, membership jumped from 12,900 to more than 31,000. Lane launched SFMOMA’s website that same year, increasing public awareness of upcoming exhibits.

Lane took advantage of the new wealth brought in by the dot-com bubble to acquire significant works for the museum, including pieces by Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol and Brice Marden. David Ross, who took over as director in 1998, continued this trend, acquiring pieces by Ellsworth Kelly, Charles Sheeler and René Magritte.

Under Ross’ directorship, SFMOMA began to focus heavily on digital arts. The museum launched “e.space,” an online curatorial space that featured SFMOMA’s Web-based art. In 2001, the museum exhibited “010101: Art in Technological Times” to showcase the rosy future promised by technological advances. But the prediction turned out to be premature.

“At that time we had the dot-com bubble in San Francisco,” Berson said, noting that when it burst, “we certainly felt it.”

Ross resigned in 2001 to pursue a career in the technology field. The board of trustees selected Neal Benezra as SFMOMA’s new director in 2002.

Benezra was an easy choice: Born in Oakland, he fell in love with SFMOMA when he visited it as a child. As a young adult, he had even applied for an internship at the museum but had been turned down.

Returning as director 20 years later, Benezra inherited a museum that was suffering from layoffs and a $2 million deficit. To re-energize it, Benezra organized blockbuster shows. In 2002, the Marc Chagall exhibition broke the attendance record for the museum. In 2008, the Frida Kahlo exhibit broke that record again. The museum also featured the work of other popular artists, such as Diane Arbus, Sol LeWitt and Jeff Wall.

SFMOMA also continued to expand its educational opportunities. In 2002, the museum opened the Koret Visitor Education Center — the first drop-in education center in a U.S. museum. In 2005, the education department started a podcast series on artists and programming at the museum called Artcasts. Berson noted that when the museum reopens, they hope to serve 55,000 students a year — up from 18,000 when SFMOMA closed.

When visitors enter SFMOMA in May, they will be greeted by expanded gallery spaces, stairs that mimic San Francisco streets, a contemporary photography center and other unfamiliar sights.

But finding traces of SFMOMA’s history won’t be difficult. Among the hundreds of paintings, photographs and installations on display will be works of art that have traveled with the museum since its inception. As Berson pointed out, it’s ultimately the artwork that will inform visitors about the history surrounding them.

Eli Wolfe is a Bay Area freelance writer.

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art: Reopens May 14th at 151 Third St., S.F. Galleries will be open 10 a.m.-8 p.m. on opening day. Regular museum hours will be 10 a.m.-5 p.m. every day except Thursdays, which will be 10 a.m.-8 p.m. $25 for adults, $22 for seniors, $19 for young adults, and free for youth 18 and younger. (415) 337-4000 www.sfmoma.org.