De Young Museum

Golden

With the new de Young museum, San Francisco firmly cements its place as a trailblazing city.

Words by Richard Bence

Swiss design team Herzog and de Meuron first received international attention for transforming a disused power station on London’s South Bank into one of the most visited public buildings in the world—the Tate Modern. And now the fi rm looks set to replicate this success by putting the ever-popular city of San Francisco squarely on the contemporary architectural map with the building of the new de Young Museum (www.deyoungmuseum.org, 415-863-3330). The museum, which opened last October, draws crowds as much for the building itself as the art collection inside.

Originally founded in 1895, the de Young Museum, in Golden Gate Park, has long been a part of the city’s cultural fabric. The reopening in the new state-of-the-art facility—which integrates art, architecture and the natural landscape—provides San Francisco with a landmark art museum that showcases priceless collections of American art from the 17th through the 20th centuries, and art of the native Americas, Africa and the Pacifi c.

The museum has already won praise from Travel + Leisure magazine, which voted it Best Museum, and international style bible Wallpaper* magazine, which deemed it Best New Public Building—ranking it among the Millau Viaduct in France by Foster and Partners, and New York’s MoMA by Yoshio Taniguchi. The copper-clad structure has been likened to a Mayan temple or a rusty aircraft carrier (depending on who you talk to), balancing its vision of grandeur and delicate harmony with its surroundings.

From the 1960s through the mid-’80s, San Francisco embraced a historic urban preservation design plan. And for a city that prides itself on breaking boundaries, provocative buildings were scarce and many projects were tediously tame. The de Young has changed all that. Architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron have woven together three parallel bands of galleries that are two stories high, then stretched a taut band of patterned copper around them. Situated next to the Japanese Tea Garden, it’s in a beautiful spot. On a sunny day, you can sit out on the museum terrace café sipping a latte and congratulating yourself on your purchases in the well-stocked museum shop. Complete with an observation deck so tall it peeks above surrounding trees, the building will change color over the years as its perforated copper exterior oxidizes, acquiring darker shades of green, brown and black, making it the perfect symbiosis of art and nature.

In the specially designed galleries, you experience both the distinctions and the connections between the arts of different cultures and eras. On entering, you are struck by Andy Goldsworthy’s “Drawn Stone,” which was inspired by California’s dramatic topography. Delving deeper, you’ll fi nd collections that encompass more than 25,000 works of art from around the world.

Until June 18, you can catch the International Arts and Crafts exhibition, boasting more than 300 examples from turn-of-the-century Europe, America and Japan. With pioneers like William Morris and Frank Lloyd Wright at the helm, the Arts and Crafts movement changed the way people thought about work, design and the home. It was inspired by a profound belief in social and industrial reform—culminating in the revival of handicrafts, a return to the simple life and the role of art in everyday life. Drawing upon both tradition and innovation, it challenged the traditional hierarchies in the arts and turned artists into craftsmen and vice versa. It is a fi tting exhibition for this bold museum.