The de Young Museum, formally the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, is a

fine art In European academic traditions, fine art is developed primarily for aesthetics or creative expression, distinguishing it from decorative art or applied art, which also has to serve some practical function, such as pottery or most metalwor ...

museum A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make th ...

located in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17t ...

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

. Located in

Golden Gate Park Golden Gate Park, located in San Francisco, California, United States, is a large urban park consisting of of public grounds. It is administered by the San Francisco Recreation & Parks Department, which began in 1871 to oversee the developm ...

, it is a component of the

Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (FAMSF), comprising the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park and the Legion of Honor in Lincoln Park, is the largest public arts institution in the city of San Francisco. The permanent collection of the ...

, along with the

Legion of Honor The National Order of the Legion of Honour (french: Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur), formerly the Royal Order of the Legion of Honour ('), is the highest French order of merit, both military and civil. Established in 1802 by Napoleon ...

. The de Young is named for early San Francisco newspaperman

M. H. de Young Michael Henry de Young (September 30, 1849 – February 15, 1925) was an American journalist and businessman. Early life De Young was born in St. Louis, Missouri. The family was Jewish. Michael in later years claimed that his father was a Balt ...

History

The museum opened in 1895 as an outgrowth of the

California Midwinter International Exposition of 1894 The California Midwinter International Exposition of 1894, commonly referred to as the "Midwinter Exposition" or the "Midwinter Fair", was a World's Fair that officially operated from January 27 to July 5 in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. In ...

(a fair modeled on the Chicago

World's Columbian Exposition The World's Columbian Exposition (also known as the Chicago World's Fair) was a world's fair held in Chicago in 1893 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World in 1492. The centerpiece of the Fair, hel ...

of the previous year). It was housed in an

Egyptian revival Egyptian Revival is an architectural style that uses the motifs and imagery of ancient Egypt. It is attributed generally to the public awareness of ancient Egyptian monuments generated by Napoleon's conquest of Egypt and Admiral Nelson's defeat ...

structure which had been the Fine Arts Building at the fair. The building was badly damaged in the

1906 San Francisco earthquake At 05:12 Pacific Standard Time on Wednesday, April 18, 1906, the coast of Northern California was struck by a major earthquake with an estimated moment magnitude of 7.9 and a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI (''Extreme''). High-intensity ...

, and was closed for a year and a half for repairs. Before long, the museum's steady development called for a new space to better serve its growing audiences. Michael de Young responded by planning the building that would serve as the core of the de Young facility through the 20th century. Louis Christian Mullgardt, the coordinator for architecture for the

1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition Events Below, the events of World War I have the "WWI" prefix. January *January – British physicist Sir Joseph Larmor publishes his observations on "The Influence of Local Atmospheric Cooling on Astronomical Refraction". *January 1 * ...

, designed the Spanish-Plateresque-style building. The new structure was completed in 1919 and formally transferred by de Young to the city's park commissioners. In 1921, de Young added a central section, together with a tower that would become the museum's signature feature, and the museum began to assume the basic configuration that it retained until 2000. De Young's efforts were honored with the changing of the museum's name to the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum. Another addition, a west wing, was completed in 1925, the year de Young died. In 1929 the original Egyptian-style building was declared unsafe and demolished. By 1949, the elaborate cast concrete ornamentation of the original de Young was determined to be a hazard and removed because the salt air from the

Pacific The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the contine ...

had rusted the supporting steel. As part of the agreement that created the

in 1972, the de Young's collection of European art was sent to the

. In compensation, the de Young received the right to display the bulk of the organization's anthropological holdings. These include significant pre-Hispanic works from

Teotihuacan Teotihuacan ( Spanish: ''Teotihuacán'') (; ) is an ancient Mesoamerican city located in a sub-valley of the Valley of Mexico, which is located in the State of Mexico, northeast of modern-day Mexico City. Teotihuacan is known today as ...

and Peru, as well as indigenous tribal art from

sub-Saharan Africa Sub-Saharan Africa is, geographically, the area and regions of the continent of Africa that lies south of the Sahara. These include West Africa, East Africa, Central Africa, and Southern Africa. Geopolitically, in addition to the List of sov ...

. The building was severely damaged by the

1989 Loma Prieta earthquake The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake occurred on California's Central Coast on October 17 at local time. The shock was centered in The Forest of Nisene Marks State Park in Santa Cruz County, approximately northeast of Santa Cruz on a section of t ...

.Amy Weaver Dorning
"Museum Renovation: A Great Institution Gets Greater," ''American Heritage'', Nov./Dec. 2006. It in turn was demolished and replaced by a new building in 2005. The only remaining original elements of the old de Young are the vases and sphinxes located near the Pool of Enchantment. The palm trees in front of the building are also original to the site. The ''de Young’s Artist Studio'' is an artist-in-residency program to encourage arts community engagement and support emerging artists and since 2010 is part of the Cultural Encounters initiative.

Collections

The de Young showcases

American art Visual art of the United States or American art is visual art made in the United States or by U.S. artists. Before colonization there were many flourishing traditions of Native American art, and where the Spanish colonized Spanish Colonial arc ...

from the 17th through the 21st centuries, international

contemporary art Contemporary art is the art of today, produced in the second half of the 20th century or in the 21st century. Contemporary artists work in a globally influenced, culturally diverse, and technologically advancing world. Their art is a dynamic ...

textiles Textile is an umbrella term that includes various fiber-based materials, including fibers, yarns, filaments, threads, different fabric types, etc. At first, the word "textiles" only referred to woven fabrics. However, weaving is not the ...

, and

costume Costume is the distinctive style of dress or cosmetic of an individual or group that reflects class, gender, profession, ethnicity, nationality, activity or epoch. In short costume is a cultural visual of the people. The term also was tradition ...

s, and art from the Americas, the Pacific and Africa. The deYoung Museum Collections include: American Art, African Art, Oceanic Art, Arts of the Americas, Costume and Textile Arts, Graphic Arts, Photography and Sculpture. Some of the collection is accessible online on the museum website and Google Arts and Culture.

American

The American art collection consists of over 1,000 paintings, 800 sculptures, and 3,000 decorative arts objects. It includes works ranging from 1670 to the present day. Since its inception in the Fine Arts Building at the

in Golden Gate Park, its subsequent institutionalization in the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum in 1924, and its reinstallation in the new de Young in 2005, the permanent collection has evolved exponentially. Frederic Edwin Church - Rainy Season in the Tropics - Google Art Project

Frederic Edwin Church - Rainy Season in the Tropics - Google Art Project

In 1978, the American art collections were transformed by the decision of

John D. Rockefeller III John Davison Rockefeller III (March 21, 1906 – July 10, 1978) was an American philanthropist. Rockefeller was the eldest son and second child of John D. Rockefeller Jr. and Abby Aldrich Rockefeller as well as a grandson of Standard Oil co-found ...

and Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller to donate their renowned collection of 110 paintings, 29 drawings, and 2 sculptures to the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco where they would be on view at the de Young. The de Young's chronological survey of American art includes galleries devoted to art in the following areas: Native American and Spanish Colonial; Anglo-Colonial; Federal era art and Neoclassical; Victorian

genre Genre () is any form or type of communication in any mode (written, spoken, digital, artistic, etc.) with socially-agreed-upon conventions developed over time. In popular usage, it normally describes a category of literature, music, or other f ...

and

realism Realism, Realistic, or Realists may refer to: In the arts *Realism (arts), the general attempt to depict subjects truthfully in different forms of the arts Arts movements related to realism include: * Classical Realism *Literary realism, a mov ...

; ''

trompe-l'œil ''Trompe-l'œil'' ( , ; ) is an artistic term for the highly realistic optical illusion of three-dimensional space and objects on a two-dimensional surface. ''Trompe l'oeil'', which is most often associated with painting, tricks the viewer into ...

still life A still life (plural: still lifes) is a work of art depicting mostly inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which are either natural (food, flowers, dead animals, plants, rocks, shells, etc.) or man-made (drinking glasses, bo ...

; the

Hudson River School The Hudson River School was a mid-19th century American art movement embodied by a group of landscape painters whose aesthetic vision was influenced by Romanticism. The paintings typically depict the Hudson River Valley and the surrounding area ...

Barbizon Barbizon () is a commune (town) in the Seine-et-Marne department in north-central France. It is located near the Fontainebleau Forest. Demographics The inhabitants are called ''Barbizonais''. Art history The Barbizon school of painters is nam ...

, and

Tonalism Tonalism was an artistic style that emerged in the 1880s when American artists began to paint landscape forms with an overall tone of colored atmosphere or mist. Between 1880 and 1915, dark, neutral hues such as gray, brown or blue, often domina ...

;

Impressionism Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passa ...

and the

Ashcan School The Ashcan School, also called the Ash Can School, was an artistic movement in the United States during the late 19th-early 20th century that produced works portraying scenes of daily life in New York, often in the city's poorer neighborhoods. ...

;

Arts and Crafts A handicraft, sometimes more precisely expressed as artisanal handicraft or handmade, is any of a wide variety of types of work where useful and decorative objects are made completely by one’s hand or by using only simple, non-automated re ...

;

Modernism Modernism is both a philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new forms of art, philosophy, an ...

;

Social Realism Social realism is the term used for work produced by painters, printmakers, photographers, writers and filmmakers that aims to draw attention to the real socio-political conditions of the working class as a means to critique the power structure ...

and American Scene;

Surrealism Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself. Its aim was, according to ...

and

Abstraction Abstraction in its main sense is a conceptual process wherein general rules and concepts are derived from the usage and classification of specific examples, literal ("real" or " concrete") signifiers, first principles, or other methods. "An abst ...

;

Beat Beat, beats or beating may refer to: Common uses * Patrol, or beat, a group of personnel assigned to monitor a specific area ** Beat (police), the territory that a police officer patrols ** Gay beat, an area frequented by gay men * Battery (c ...

Pop Pop or POP may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Music * Pop music, a musical genre Artists * POP, a Japanese idol group now known as Gang Parade * Pop!, a UK pop group * Pop! featuring Angie Hart, an Australian band Albums * ''Pop'' ( ...

, and Figurative; and Contemporary. Although the permanent collection is national in scope, art made in California from the

Gold Rush A gold rush or gold fever is a discovery of gold—sometimes accompanied by other precious metals and rare-earth minerals—that brings an onrush of miners seeking their fortune. Major gold rushes took place in the 19th century in Australia, New ...

era to the present day is also on display in the de Young. Important California collections with national significance include examples of Spanish colonial, Arts and Crafts, and Bay Area Figurative and Assemblage art. Important among them are the most significant museum collections of works by Bay Area painter

Chiura Obata was a well-known Japanese-American artist and popular art teacher. A self-described "roughneck", Obata went to the United States in 1903, at age 17. After initially working as an illustrator and commercial decorator, he had a successful career a ...

and sculptor

Ruth Asawa Ruth Aiko Asawa (January 24, 1926 – August 5, 2013) was an American modernist sculptor. Her work is featured in collections at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City.< ...

. The permanent collection galleries integrate decorative arts objects with paintings and sculptures, emphasizing the artistic, social, and political context for the works on display. While essentially chronological, the installation also juxtaposes works from different cultures and time periods to emphasize the historical connections between works in the collection. Painters with paintings in this art museum include;

John Singleton Copley John Singleton Copley (July 3, 1738 – September 9, 1815) was an Anglo-American painter, active in both colonial America and England. He was probably born in Boston, Massachusetts, to Richard and Mary Singleton Copley, both Anglo-Irish. Afte ...

John Vanderlyn John Vanderlyn (October 18, 1775September 23, 1852) was an American neoclassicist painter. Biography Vanderlyn was born at Kingston, New York, and was the grandson of colonial portrait painter Pieter Vanderlyn. He was employed by a print-sell ...

Thomas Cole Thomas Cole was an English-born American artist and the founder of the Hudson River School art movement. Cole is widely regarded as the first significant American landscape painter. He was known for his romantic landscape and history painti ...

(''Prometheus Bound''), Thomas Hill, Thomas Wood (''Newspaper Vendor''), Samuel Brookes, John Peto,

Childe Hassam Frederick Childe Hassam (; October 17, 1859 – August 27, 1935) was an American Impressionist painter, noted for his urban and coastal scenes. Along with Mary Cassatt and John Henry Twachtman, Hassam was instrumental in promulgating Impressioni ...

, Edmund C. Tarbell (''The Blue Veil''), George Hitchcock,

Maynard Dixon Maynard Dixon (January 24, 1875 – November 11, 1946) was an American artist. He was known for his paintings, and his body of work focused on the American West. Dixon is considered one of the finest artists having dedicated most of their art o ...

Otis Oldfield Otis William Oldfield (July 3, 1890 – May 18, 1969) was a San Francisco painter, printmaker and art educator. Early life and education Otis William Oldfield was born on July 3, 1890, in Sacramento, California, Sacramento, California. He att ...

Granville Redmond Granville Richard Seymour Redmond (March 9, 1871 – May 24, 1935) was an American landscape painter and exponent of Tonalism and California Impressionism. He was also an occasional actor for his friend Charlie Chaplin. Early years Red ...

, Thomas Hart Benton (''Susannah and the Elders''), David Park,

Richard Diebenkorn Richard Diebenkorn (April 22, 1922 – March 30, 1993) was an American painter and printmaker. His early work is associated with abstract expressionism and the Bay Area Figurative Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. In the late 1960s he bega ...

, Mel Ramos, and

Wayne Thiebaud Morton Wayne Thiebaud ( ; November 15, 1920 – December 25, 2021) was an American painter known for his colorful works depicting commonplace objects—pies, lipsticks, paint cans, ice cream cones, pastries, and hot dogs—as well as for his la ...

. In January 2017, the institution announced a significant new addition to its collection of American Art through the acquisition of 62 works by 22 contemporary African American Arts, including

Thornton Dial Thornton Dial (10 September 1928 – 25 January 2016) was a pioneering American artist who came to prominence in the late 1980s. Dial's body of work exhibits formal variety through expressive, densely composed assemblages of found materials, ofte ...

's ''Blood And Meat: Survival For the World'' (1992) and ''Lost Cows'' (2000-1), Joe Light's ''Dawn'' (1988),

Jessie T. Pettway Jessie T. Pettway (born 1929) is an American artist associated with the Gee's Bend group of quilters. In 2006 her quilt ''Bars and string-pieced columns'' appeared on a US Postal service stamp as part of a series commemorating Gee's Bend quilte ...

's ''Bars'' and ''String-Pierced Columns'' (1950s),

Lonnie Holley Lonnie Bradley Holley (born February 10, 1950) sometimes known as the Sand Man, is an American artist, art educator, and musician. He is best known for his assemblages and immersive environments made of found materials. He was born the 7th of 27 c ...

's ''Him and Her Hold the Root'' (1994) and Joe Minter's ''Camel at the Watering Hole'' (1995) The works are currently exhibited i
Revelations: Art from the African American South
on view until April 1, 2018.

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/sup> The de Young is also opening the first-ever retrospective of Feminist art movement in the United States">Feminist Art Feminist art is a category of art associated with the late 1960s and 1970s feminist movement. Feminist art highlights the societal and political differences women experience within their lives. The hopeful gain from this form of art is to bri ...

pioneer Judy Chicago in 2020, forty years after her landmark installation ''The Dinner Party'' (1974–79) made its debut in San Francisco. ;Archives of American Art Since 1991, the American Art Department has housed a set of the

Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Found ...

’s

Archives of American Art The Archives of American Art is the largest collection of primary resources documenting the history of the visual arts in the United States. More than 20 million items of original material are housed in the Archives' research centers in Washing ...

microfilm collection. In conjunction with the Bothin Library and department research files, the American Art Study Center is the most important research center for American art on the West Coast.

International contemporary

In 1988, the Fine Arts Museums made a commitment to collect international contemporary art. In addition to works in traditional media, this commitment has expanded the museums’ holdings of works in new or multiple media––including installation and conceptual works, video and other time-based media, and photography and other lens-based media––to more accurately reflect contemporary art practice. Recent contemporary acquisitions include ''Wall of Light Horizon'' (2005), by

Sean Scully Sean Scully (born 30 June 1945) is an Irish-born American-based artist working as a painter, printmaker, sculptor and photographer. His work is held in museum collections worldwide and he has twice been named a Turner Prize nominee. Moving fro ...

and signature sculptures by Zhan Wang and

Cornelia Parker Cornelia Ann Parker (born 14 July 1956) is an English visual artist, best known for her sculpture and installation art.Piotr Abraszewski Piotr Abraszewski (June 29, 1905 – June 9, 1996) was a Polish painter born in Zamość, Poland. From 1928 to 1934 he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw with Professor M. Kotarbinski, and in 1935 he became Assistant Professor at th ...

, Christopher Brown, Squeak Carnwath, Jim Christiansen,

Robert Colescott Robert H. Colescott (August 26, 1925 – June 4, 2009) was an American painter. He is known for satirical genre and crowd subjects, often conveying his exuberant, comical, or bitter reflections on being African American. He studied with Fernand L ...

Hung Liu Hung Liu (劉虹) (17 February 1948 – 7 August 2021) was a Chinese Americans, Chinese-born American contemporary artist. She was predominantly a painter, but also worked with mixed-media and site-specific installation and was also one of the f ...

Bruce Nauman Bruce Nauman (born December 6, 1941) is an American artist. His practice spans a broad range of media including sculpture, photography, neon, video, drawing, printmaking, and performance. Nauman lives near Galisteo, New Mexico. Life and work ...

, Rachel Neubauer,

Ed Ruscha Edward Joseph Ruscha IV (, ''roo-SHAY''; born December 16, 1937) is an American artist associated with the pop art movement. He has worked in the media of painting, printmaking, drawing, photography and film. He is also noted for creating severa ...

and

Masami Teraoka Masami Teraoka (born 1936) is an American contemporary artist. His work includes '' Ukiyo-e''-influenced woodcut prints and paintings in watercolor and oil. He is known for work that merges traditional Edo-style aesthetics with icons of American cu ...

. Lens-based and time-based media represent a new area of growth, with works by Nigel Poor, Catherine Wagner, Rebeca Bollinger, Alan Rath and the Propeller Group. The museums have also acquired works by international artists such as

Anish Kapoor Sir Anish Mikhail Kapoor (born 12 March 1954) is a British-Indian sculptor specializing in installation art and conceptual art. Born in Mumbai, Kapoor attended the elite all-boys Indian boarding school The Doon School, before moving to the UK t ...

Odd Nerdrum Odd Nerdrum (born 8 April 1944) is a Norwegian figurative painter, born in Sweden, and considered to be one of the greatest living classical figurative painters. His work is held by museums worldwide. Themes and style in Nerdrum's work referenc ...

Gottfried Helnwein Gottfried Helnwein (born 8 October 1948) is an Austrian-Irish visual artist. He has worked as a painter, draftsman, photographer, muralist, sculptor, installation and performance artist, using a wide variety of techniques and media. His work is ...

Doris Salcedo Doris Salcedo (b. 1958) is a Colombian-born visual artist and sculptor."Doris Salcedo"
Art 21, Retrieved 1 ...

, David Nash,

Barbara Hepworth Dame Jocelyn Barbara Hepworth (10 January 1903 – 20 May 1975) was an English artist and sculptor. Her work exemplifies Modernism and in particular modern sculpture. Along with artists such as Ben Nicholson and Naum Gabo, Hepworth was a lea ...

, and Richard Deacon.

Textiles and costumes

The Fine Arts Museums’ textiles collection boasts more than 13,000 textiles and costumes from around the world. It is one of the largest and most comprehensive collections of its type in the United States. It comprises costume and costume accessories; loom-woven textiles; non-woven fabrics; and objects whose primary decoration is produced through techniques such as

beading Beadwork is the art or craft of attaching beads to one another by stringing them onto a thread or thin wire with a sewing or beading needle or sewing them to cloth. Beads are produced in a diverse range of materials, shapes, and sizes, and vary ...

and

embroidery Embroidery is the craft of decorating fabric or other materials using a needle to apply thread or yarn. Embroidery may also incorporate other materials such as pearls, beads, quills, and sequins. In modern days, embroidery is usually seen ...

. The de Young has exhibited fashion since the 1930s, with pieces by

Dior Christian Dior SE (), commonly known as Dior (stylized DIOR), is a French luxury fashion house controlled and chaired by French businessman Bernard Arnault, who also heads LVMH, the world's largest luxury group. Dior itself holds 42.36% shar ...

Balenciaga Balenciaga SA ( ) is a luxury fashion house founded in 1919 by the Spanish designer Cristóbal Balenciaga in San Sebastian, Spain. Balenciaga produces ready-to-wear, footwear, handbags, and accessories and licenses its name and branding to Co ...

, Madame Grès, Yves Saint Laurent,

Chanel Chanel ( , ) is a French high-end luxury fashion house founded in 1910 by Coco Chanel in Paris. Chanel specializes in women's ready-to-wear, luxury goods, and accessories and licenses its name and branding to Luxottica for eyewear. Chane ...

Ralph Rucci Ralph Rucci (born 1957) is an American fashion designer and artist. He is known in particular for Chado Ralph Rucci, a luxury clothing and accessories line. Rucci's clothing designs have appeared in a number of major exhibitions, and he has won ...

, and

Kaisik Wong Kaisik Wong (1950 – 1990) was a Chinese-American fashion designer. He was best known for his patchwork vest, which was plagiarized for Balenciaga's Spring/Summer 2002 collection. Wong emerged from San Francisco wearable art movement in the ea ...

. There are equally compelling collections of 18th and 19th-century European

fans Fan commonly refers to: * Fan (machine), a machine for producing airflow, often used for cooling ** Hand fan, an implement held and waved by hand to move air for cooling * Fan (person), short for fanatic; an enthusiast or supporter, especially wit ...

, an excellent

lace Lace is a delicate fabric made of yarn or thread in an open weblike pattern, made by machine or by hand. Generally, lace is divided into two main categories, needlelace and bobbin lace, although there are other types of lace, such as knitted o ...

collection, a spectacular group of European ecclesiastical

vestment Vestments are liturgical garments and articles associated primarily with the Christian religion, especially by Eastern Churches, Catholics (of all rites), Anglicans, and Lutherans. Many other groups also make use of liturgical garments; th ...

s and furnishings, and a growing collection of contemporary wearable art. In August 201
The Summer of Love Experience: Art, Fashion, and Rock & Roll
marked another highlight at the de Young. The exhibition celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Summer of Love and featured fashion from the late sixties from the museum's permanent collection and on loan from Bay Area independent designers. The exhibit hosted 270,000 visitors. In the fall of 2018, the de Young organize
Contemporary Muslim Fashions
The exhibition explored Muslim female dress codes from multiple communities, cultures and religious interpretations, starting at the turn of the millennium. It was the first large scale exploration of the topic at an art institution, and included emerging and established designers and artists from Europe, the Middle East, South East Asia and the US. The exhibition will travel t
Museum Angewandte Kunst
in Frankfurt in the spring of 2019.

Africa, Pacific, and the Americas

More than 1,400 stellar examples from the eastern Sudan, the Guinea coast, west and central Africa, eastern and southern Africa, and elsewhere on the continent are included in the Fine Arts Museums’ African art collection at the de Young. The African art collection is presented thematically rather than geographically, emphasizing the aesthetic and expressive qualities of the art. The Oceanic collections were charter collections of the de Young, their nucleus formed in 1894 at the California Midwinter International Exposition in Golden Gate Park. Additional Oceanic works of

sculpture Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable ...

basketry Basket weaving (also basketry or basket making) is the process of weaving or sewing pliable materials into three-dimensional artifacts, such as baskets, mats, mesh bags or even furniture. Craftspeople and artists specialized in making baskets ...

tapa Tapa, TAPA, Tapas or Tapasya may refer to: Media *Tapas (website), a webtoon site, formerly known as Tapastic * ''Tapas'' (film), a 2005 Spanish film * ''Tapasya'' (1976 film), an Indian Hindi-language film * ''Tapasya'' (1992 film), a Nepalese f ...

ceramic A ceramic is any of the various hard, brittle, heat-resistant and corrosion-resistant materials made by shaping and then firing an inorganic, nonmetallic material, such as clay, at a high temperature. Common examples are earthenware, porcelain, ...

s, and lithics have since been acquired, bringing the holdings to more than 3,000. Highlights of the collection include a housepost from the Iatmul people of the

Sepik River The Sepik () is the longest river on the island of New Guinea, and the second largest in Oceania by discharge volume after the Fly River. The majority of the river flows through the Papua New Guinea (PNG) provinces of Sandaun (formerly West Se ...

Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea (abbreviated PNG; , ; tpi, Papua Niugini; ho, Papua Niu Gini), officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea ( tpi, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niugini; ho, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niu Gini), is a country i ...

, a group of brightly painted carvings used in

malanggan Malagan (also spelled malangan or malanggan) ceremonies are large, intricate traditional cultural events that take place in parts of New Ireland province in Papua New Guinea. The word malagan refers to wooden carvings prepared for ceremonies an ...

ceremonials of New Ireland, a roll of feather money from Nindu Island of Santa Cruz, a fan from the

Marquesas Islands The Marquesas Islands (; french: Îles Marquises or ' or '; Marquesan: ' (North Marquesan) and ' ( South Marquesan), both meaning "the land of men") are a group of volcanic islands in French Polynesia, an overseas collectivity of France in ...

Polynesia Polynesia () "many" and νῆσος () "island"), to, Polinisia; mi, Porinihia; haw, Polenekia; fj, Polinisia; sm, Polenisia; rar, Porinetia; ty, Pōrīnetia; tvl, Polenisia; tkl, Polenihia (, ) is a subregion of Oceania, made up of ...

, a rare navigation figure from the

Caroline Islands The Caroline Islands (or the Carolines) are a widely scattered archipelago of tiny islands in the western Pacific Ocean, to the north of New Guinea. Politically, they are divided between the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) in the ce ...

Micronesia Micronesia (, ) is a subregion of Oceania, consisting of about 2,000 small islands in the western Pacific Ocean. It has a close shared cultural history with three other island regions: the Philippines to the west, Polynesia to the east, ...

, and a selection of powerful

wood carving Wood carving is a form of woodworking by means of a cutting tool (knife) in one hand or a chisel by two hands or with one hand on a chisel and one hand on a mallet, resulting in a wooden figure or figurine, or in the sculptural ornamentati ...

s from the Maori peoples of New Zealand. The Art of the Americas collections are of national significance to

art history Art history is the study of aesthetic objects and visual expression in historical and stylistic context. Traditionally, the discipline of art history emphasized painting, drawing, sculpture, architecture, ceramics and decorative arts; yet today, ...

anthropology Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of be ...

, and world history, and they have helped establish the de Young as a primary source for cultural research and study. The extensive collection of ancient American and Native American art comprises nearly 2,000 works of art from Meso-America, Central and South America, and the West Coast of North America. Art from cultures indigenous to the American continents was a defining feature of the museum's charter collection and continues to be an area of significant growth. Special galleries are devoted to ancient objects from Mexico, including an outstanding grouping of

murals.

European

The permanent collection also contains some works by European painters, such as

Salvador Dalí Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marquess of Dalí of Púbol (; ; ; 11 May 190423 January 1989) was a Spanish Surrealism, surrealist artist renowned for his technical skill, precise draftsmanship, and the striking and bizarr ...

Selected collection highlights

Frederic Edwin Church - Rainy Season in the Tropics - Google Art Project.jpg, Frederic Edwin Church George Henry Durrie - Winter in the Country - Google Art Project.jpg, George Henry Durrie William Hahn - Sacramento Railroad Station - Google Art Project.jpg, William Hahn

Architecture

The current building was completed by architects

Jacques Herzog Herzog & de Meuron Basel Ltd.,
" Herzog & de Meuron. Retrieved on 11 October 2012. "Herzog & de Meuron Basel Ltd. R ...

, Pierre de Meuron and Fong + Chan and opened on October 15, 2005. Structural, civil and geotechnical engineering was provided by Rutherford & Chekene; Arup provided mechanical and electrical engineering.

Herzog & de Meuron Herzog & de Meuron Basel Ltd.,
" Herzog & de Meuron. Retrieved on 11 October 2012. "Herzog & de Meuron Basel Ltd. R ...

won the competition in January 1999 beating out other short-listed architects

Tadao Ando is a Japanese autodidact architect whose approach to architecture and landscape was categorized by architectural historian Francesco Dal Co as "critical regionalism". He is the winner of the 1995 Pritzker Prize. Early life Ando was born a few m ...

and

Antoine Predock Antoine Predock ( ; born 1936 in Lebanon, Missouri) is an American architect based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He is the principal of Antoine Predock Architect PC, the studio he founded in 1967. Predock first gained national attention with the La ...

. The terrain and seismic activity in San Francisco posed a challenge for the designers

Herzog & de Meuron Herzog & de Meuron Basel Ltd.,
" Herzog & de Meuron. Retrieved on 11 October 2012. "Herzog & de Meuron Basel Ltd. R ...

and principal architects Fong & Chan. To help withstand future earthquakes, “ he buildingcan move up to three feet (91 centimeters) due to a system of ball-bearing sliding plates and viscous fluid dampers that absorb

kinetic energy In physics, the kinetic energy of an object is the energy that it possesses due to its motion. It is defined as the work needed to accelerate a body of a given mass from rest to its stated velocity. Having gained this energy during its acce ...

and convert it to heat”. A new museum structure located in the middle of an urban park was initially controversial. San Francisco voters twice defeated bond measures that were to fund the new museum project. After the second defeat, the museum itself planned to relocate to a location in the

financial district A financial district is usually a central area in a city where financial services firms such as banks, insurance companies and other related finance corporations have their head offices. In major cities, financial districts are often home to s ...

. However, an effort led by generous supporters arose and kept the museum in the Golden Gate Park. The designers were sensitive to the appearance of the building in its natural setting.

Walter Hood Walter J. Hood (born 1958, Charlotte, NC) is an American professor and former chair of landscape architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, and principal of Hood Design Studio in Oakland, California. In 2019, Hood was awarded the MacA ...

, a landscape architect based in

Oakland Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third largest city overall in the Bay ...

, designed the museum's new gardens. The entire exterior is clad in of copper, which is expected to eventually oxidize and take on a greenish tone and a distinct texture to echo the nearby

eucalyptus tree ''Eucalyptus'' () is a genus of over seven hundred species of flowering trees, shrubs or mallees in the myrtle family, Myrtaceae. Along with several other genera in the tribe Eucalypteae, including ''Corymbia'', they are commonly known as euca ...

s. In order to further harmonize with the surroundings, shapes were cut into the top to reveal gardens and courtyards where 48 trees had been planted, the giant tree-ferns that form a backdrop for the museum entrance are particularly dramatic. 5.12 acres (20,700 square meters) of new landscaping were planted as well, with 344 transplanted trees and 69 historic boulders. The building is clad with variably perforated and dimpled copper plates, whose

patina Patina ( or ) is a thin layer that variously forms on the surface of copper, brass, bronze and similar metals and metal alloys ( tarnish produced by oxidation or other chemical processes) or certain stones and wooden furniture (sheen produce ...

will slowly change through exposure to the elements. This exterior facade was developed and fabricated by engineers at Zahner. A 144 ft. (44 m) observation tower allows visitors to see much of Golden Gate Park's Music Concourse (see below) and rises above the Park's treetops, providing a view of the

Golden Gate The Golden Gate is a strait on the west coast of North America that connects San Francisco Bay to the Pacific Ocean. It is defined by the headlands of the San Francisco Peninsula and the Marin Peninsula, and, since 1937, has been spanned by t ...

and

Marin Headlands The Marin Headlands is a hilly peninsula at the southernmost end of Marin County, California, United States, located just north of San Francisco across the Golden Gate Bridge, which connects the two counties and peninsulas. The entire area is p ...

. The twisting 144 foot (44 m) tall tower is a distinctive feature, and can be seen rising above the canopy of Golden Gate Park from many areas of San Francisco. The museum offers a two-floor museum store, free access to the lobby and tower, and a full-service cafe with outdoor seating in the Osher Sculpture Garden.

Notes

References

*Ashmore, Lisa. “San Francisco's New de Young.�
''Architecture Week''
*Guthrie, Julian. “De Young's Rebirth.�
''San Francisco Chronicle'', 15 October 2005.
*King, John. “Into The Modern Age.�
''San Francisco Chronicle'', 9 October 2005.
*Sardar, Zahid. “Painting A New Landscape.�
''San Francisco Chronicle'', 9 October 2005
retrieved 22 September 2006.

External links

Official De Young Museum website

Critiquethis.us: Photographs of the Herzog & de Meuro building

Aplust.net: Architectural review by A+T architecture publishersVirtual tour of the De Young Museum
provided by

Google Arts & Culture Google Arts & Culture (formerly Google Art Project) is an online platform of high-resolution images and videos of artworks and cultural artifacts from partner cultural organizations throughout the world. It utilizes high-resolution image technol ...

* {{Authority control Art museums and galleries in San Francisco Golden Gate Park Institutions accredited by the American Alliance of Museums Art museums established in 1895 1895 establishments in California Museums established in 1895 Mesoamerican art museums in the United States Buildings and structures completed in 1895 Cultural infrastructure completed in 1895 Demolished buildings and structures in California World's fair architecture in California Buildings and structures completed in 2005 Cultural infrastructure completed in 2005 Herzog & de Meuron buildings Ove Arup buildings and structures Deconstructivism Twisted buildings and structures Postmodern architecture in California De Young family Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco African art museums in the United States

History

Collections

American

International contemporary

Textiles and costumes

Africa, Pacific, and the Americas

European

Selected collection highlights

Architecture

See also

Notes

References

External links