Museums Embrace Works From All Over the World

Though San Francisco’s largest and most famous art museum—the de Young Museum—is closed until 2005 while the city builds a new home in Golden Gate Park for its collections, visitors will find an abundance of creativity and inspiration at the city’s other art venues.

One of the city’s treasure troves is certainly the Asian Art Museum, which is in the Civic Center area near City Hall and the Opera House. When the APA meeting convenes in May, the collection will be enjoying a brand-new home, which is due to open in late March.

The museum owns more than 13,000 objects and plans to display more than 2,500 of them when the new facility opens. The museum’s collection contains works from China, India, Pakistan, Iran, Japan, Korea, Southeast Asia, and the Himalayan region.

The new museum will be at 200 Larkin Street. Admission will be $7 for adults ($5 for senior citizens), $6 for youth aged 12 to 17, and free for those under age 12. It will be open every day but Monday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Another mecca for art lovers is the California Palace of the Legion of Honor. The striking building in San Francisco’s Lincoln Park was constructed in 1924 as a memorial to the state’s World War I casualties. Travelers who have been to Paris might recognize that the building is a replica of the Palais de la Légion d’Honneur in the French capital.

The museum’s collection can boast of covering 4,000 years of painting, sculpture, and decorative arts such as tapestries and prints, almost all of it European. One highlight of its sculpture galleries is a sizable collection of scultures by Rodin.

Early-bird annual meeting goers will be in luck as the museum will have an exhibit of old masters from the great museums of Poland including Leonardo da Vinci’s celebrated painting “Portrait of a Lady With Ermine.” The exhibit “Leonardo da Vinci and the Splendors of Poland” is only on display, however, through Sunday, May 18.

The museum is at 34th and Clement streets, with a spectacular view of the Golden Gate Bridge and Pacific Ocean. It is open every day but Monday from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is $8 for adults 18 to 64, $6 for seniors aged 65 and older, and $5 for youngsters aged 12 to 17. Admission on Tuesdays is free.

For a truly unique art experience, visitors should consider a detour to the city’s Mission District—home to San Francisco’s largest Latino neighborhood—and the Precita Eyes Mural Arts Center. The center’s mission is to promote and “celebrate the wealth of murals throughout the Bay Area and honor muralists whose outstanding work has had an effect on the communities that surround them.” The Visitors’ Center at 2981 24th Street has suggestions for neighborhood walking tours of the murals—many with political themes, others with cultural ones—that adorn local stores, churches, schools, and even garage doors. During May the center sponsors Mural Awareness Month.

In January 1995 the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) moved to new digs at 151 Third Street in the increasingly popular and trendy SoMa (South of Market) district near the Moscone Center. When it opened, the building was reviewed—very favorably—as a work of art itself. Its painting and sculpture collections are particularly strong in American abstract expressionism, the art of Southern California and of the Bay Area, Fauvism, and Mexican painting.

During the time of the APA annual meeting, the museum will have two stellar exhibits for fans of modern art. “Treasures of Modern Art” highlights the collection that art patron Phyllis Wattis donated to the SFMOMA. It includes works by Andy Warhol, Marcel Dechamp, René Magritte, and Robert Rauschenberg.

There will also be an extensive exhibit of the works of Swiss modernist Paul Klee, most of which are on paper, though there are also watercolors, drawings, and etchings.

The SFMOMA is open every day but Wednesdays from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. There are late hours on Thursdays. Admission is $10 for adults, $7 for seniors aged 62 and older, $6 for students, and free for children under age 13. ▪