Collection Articles
Apr 22, 2021
Rag merchant's bag containing sakiori balls, 1873. Gift of Cynthia Shaver, 2013.44.1. Photograph by Randy Dodson.Prior to industrial manufacturing, and the globalization of our economies, many regional craftspeople...
Apr 21, 2021
Earth Day 2021 reminds us that the natural world is a powerful source of wonder and delight. A seventeenth-century work on paper from the Museums’ collection invites us to ponder our ecosystem, its cyclicality, fragility,...
Mar 25, 2021
For myself, The de Young Open was an incredible opportunity to be introduced to artists with whose work I was not already familiar. Through the exhibition, the costume textile arts department was able to make key...
Mar 11, 2021
One of the most significant features of The de Young Open was the option for the artists to sell their works and retain all the proceeds. While the myth of the “starving artist” who lives and dies only for their...
Mar 4, 2021
I was an art history major as an undergraduate attending college at the height of the Vietnam War. Protests were a daily occurrence on campus and the anti-establishment tenor of the day forced me to confront an uncomfortable...
Feb 25, 2021
The Fine Arts Museums have acquired the “Catination” Storage Jar (April 12, 1836), an inscribed ceramic created by the American potter and poet David Drake (ca. 1800–ca. 1870s). Drake, who worked in the pottery...
Feb 11, 2021
February is also known as Black History Month, an observance that originated in the United States. Recently it has gained official recognition in Canada. (Interestingly, it is also celebrated in Ireland, the Netherlands, and...
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,...