Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Exploring San Francisco's Museums and Galleries
San Francisco boasts a number of established and respectable
collections of paintings, sculpture, photography, artifacts, and
design. In addition, high-profile projects, such as the building
of a new home for the Museum of Modern Art and the
renovation of the California Palace of the Legion of Honor,
assured that the city retained its identity as the US West
Coast's center of art and culture. Other Bay Area treasures are
the many science and technology museums.
Design
Many of the larger, more
prestigious museums in the San
Francisco area have worthwhile
holdings of design and applied
art. Major collections of
architectural models and
drawings are held at the
Museum of Modern Art
.
You can see Mission-style
and turn-of-the-century Arts
and Crafts pieces at the
Oakland Museum
.
There is also a small, but
interesting, collection of late
18th-century artifacts and
furniture on display inside the
Octagon House
, itself a fine,
and unique, example of Victorian
architectural house design
(see pp76-7)
.
The
California Historical
Society
(see p115)
has an
eclectic collection of fine and
decorative arts as well as the
largest single public collection of
19th century California prints
and photography.
sculpture. The
SFMOMA holds works
by Picasso and Matisse
as well as an extensive
holding of drawings
and paintings by Paul
Klee. Abstract
Expressionists, partic-
ularly Mark Rothko and
Clyfford Still, and
California artists
represented by Sam
Francis and Richard
Diebenkorn, are also
included in this
notable collection.
Another vibrant
showcase for
contemporary artists,
the
Yerba Buena Center for
the Arts
is well worth a visit.
The same is true of the
commercial
John Berggruen
Gallery
, with its wide variety of
works on display by both
emerging artists and more
mature, well-established artists.
Outside the city limits,
the
Stanford University
Museum of Art has excellent
sculptures by Rodin on display,
while both the
UC Berkeley
Art Museum and the
Oakland
Museum
boast valuable
art collections.
Saint John the Baptist Preaching
(c.1660)
by Mattia Preti at the Legion of Honor
Photography and Prints
Photography is a field in
which San Francisco's museums
excel, with world-class
examples of most periods and
styles. The
Museum of Modern
Art
's collection ranges from
the earliest form of daguerreo-
types to classic images by
modern masters such as Helen
Levitt, Robert Frank and
Richard Avedon.
Oakland Museum
displays
rolling exhibitions by Bay Area-
based photographers such as
Ansel Adams and
Imogen Cunningham
and holds documentary
collections including an
impressive array of
photographs by iconic
American photographers
such as Dorothea Lange.
The
Fraenkel
and
SF
Camerawork
galleries
are excellent, while for
prints, the Achenbach
Foundation for Graphic
Arts in the
Legion of
Honor
has more than
100,000 works.
Painting and Sculpture
Two renowned art museums,
the
Legion of Honor
and the
de Young Museum
are
impressive showcases for a
comprehensive collection of
European and American
painting and sculpture. The
Legion of Honor focuses on
French art of the late 19th
and early 20th centuries, with
works by Renoir, Monet and
Degas as well as more than
70 sculptures by Rodin.
The famous collection of
graphic works owned by the
Achenback Foundation is also
on display here.
The
Asian Art Museum
is located in its permanent
home at the Old Main Library. It
has Far Eastern paintings,
sculpture, artifacts and fine
jade figurines.
The most dynamic of the
art museums in San Francisco
is the
Museum of Modern Art
,
with its vast array of
20th-century painting and
Fletcher Benton's 'M' sculpture outside the
Oakland Museum
