Collection Articles
Dec 9, 2020
The subject of power is all around us these days as people fill our streets, some with songs and signs calling for justice and change, and others waving flags and carrying guns and pushing against that tide. People power,...
Nov 13, 2020
Though not firmly identified, this may be the same artist who created portraits of the Freake and Gibbs families—the artist thus known as the Freake-Gibbs painter. The few surviving portraits from this period provide...
Nov 6, 2020
“What a strange power there is in clothing.” – Isaac Bashevis SingerJohn Singleton Copley was largely self-taught, using the few resources that were available to him in colonial Boston. By the time he was twenty,...
Oct 29, 2020
In the hands of the carver who made this sculpture, dynamics of power are expressed through a coded confluence of imagery. Though diminutive in scale, it is a grand representation of woman's ubiquitous power.This...
Oct 23, 2020
As we prepare to welcome the public back to the Legion of Honor, some of our masterpieces of European painting have also returned to the museum. Frequent visitors sometimes notice that their favorite painting isn’t hanging...
Oct 15, 2020
The Scream (1966), a diptych by Mike Henderson is now part of the permanent collection of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Visitors may remember Henderson’s work; his painting “Non-Violence” was on view in...
Oct 8, 2020
In recognition of Indigenous Peoples’ Day, celebrated this year on Monday, October 12, we would like to share excerpts from a recent publication from the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco celebrating Native artists from the...
Sep 29, 2020
Seth Kane Kwei (Ghanaian, 1922–1992) belonged to a royal clan of the Ga; he lived in the suburb of Teshie, near Accra, the capital of Ghana. In the 1950s, he was an apprentice to a carpenter and sometimes made traditional...
Sep 29, 2020
At the center of Richard Mayhew’s (American, b. 1924) Rhapsody, a flamboyant purple-and-blue copse of trees erupts in a vertical thrust, interrupting the horizontal rhythms of a smoldering orange sky and verdant...
Sep 29, 2020
Maria Martinez (American, San Ildefonso, 1887–1980) and her husband, Julian Martinez (American, San Ildefonso, 1879–1943), were a formidable team. Maria was an expert potter and could burnish clay to a brilliant shine....