The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is world famous for its collection of pieces from the upper echelon of the art world, including paintings by Andy Warhol and Jackson Pollock. But a new display at the museum’s gift shop is taking the museum’s art collection to an entirely new level.
For the first time, the museum’s gift shop is selling a collection of ceramic cannabis smoking devices, including water pipes that are more commonly known as “bongs.” The pieces are part of an international collection called Weed’d and range in price from $50 to $195. The pipes look more like museum pieces than something you would use to smoke weed, with perfectly round edges, colors that could fit alongside an Ellsworth Kelly painting, and designs that challenge the idea of what a cannabis pipe can look like.
This new collection at SFMOMA is a collaborative project from three Italian designers who wanted the project to “challenge the traditional narrative” associated with cannabis use and bongs, moving away from seeing them as only clinical tools that can be used to get you high, and instead, as objects of art that can stand on their own when not being used.
