Contemporary Fiber and Art to Wear: Recent Acquisitions
Bay Area Artists Consider the de Young
Organized by guest curator Glen Helfand, this exhibition explores the changing role of the museum in society, focusing specifically on the de Young. Museum Pieces will consist of 18 commissioned works in a variety of media including painting, sculpture, video, photography, installation, and digital media and sound, by San Francisco Bay Area artists and collaborative teams, including David Ireland, Tom Marioni, Deborah Oropallo, and Rigo '99.
Turkmen Carpets from The Widersperg Collection
This important collection of Central Asian carpets and textiles was donated to the Fine Arts Museums by Wolfgang and Gisela Wiedersperg in 1997. The Wiedersperg collection consists of 82 carefully chosen Turkmen rugs, bags, and decorative hangings. Objects in the collection include outstanding examples by the major Turkmen rug-producing tribes as well as many rare examples, some of which are considered the finest of their type, and serve to create a cross-section of the Turkmen weaving tradition.
Recent Acquisitions
Today's white wedding dress, a symbol of innocence, purity, and new beginnings, became a firmly established Western tradition by the late 19th century. Using rich and splendid materials as well as the incorporation of archaic fashion elements, wedding dresses not only conform to contemporary fashion, but distinguish themselves as a ritual garment set quite apart from everyday dress.
This exhibition of views of San Francisco, drawn from the permanent collections of the Fine Arts Museum, celebrates the 150th anniversary of the founding of the city. Depicted and reflected here are many of the landmarks and events most associated with San Francisco over the last century and a half, among them the physical geography of the bay and the peninsula, the 1906 earthquake and fire and its aftermath, the Great Depression, the building of the Golden Gate and Bay Bridges, and the constant making and remaking of the city and its neighborhoods.
Famous for his landmark nylon-shrouded assemblages from the 1950s and 1960s and as a leading independent post-war era filmmaker, Bruce Conner has explored painting, drawing, collage, photography, sculpture, and printmaking throughout his remarkable 40-year career. This exhibition of nearly 150 works in all media, the first major survey of Conner's art, highlights his lifelong engagement with the physical, metaphorical, and metaphysical properties of light and dark.
This exhibition showcases 11 groundbreaking, large-scale woodcuts created between 1952 and 1963 by the original, independent, and often controversial American artist Leonard Baskin. A renowned sculptor, printmaker, and book designer, Baskin has always followed his own unique artistic vision, and rejects the ideas, trends, and practices of the mainstream contemporary art world.
This exhibition, which features a richly varied selection of costumes and textiles from South America, Africa, and Asia, illustrates the many ways in which individual cultures have expressed their distinctive aesthetics and customary practices through cloth and clothing.
In 1933 the promising career of the young Berlin artist John Gutmann (1905-1998), a painter and art instructor, was abruptly suspended. Realizing that there was no future for him in Germany, Gutmann sought a new beginning. A friend advised him, "Don't stay in Europe. The only country you want to go is the U.S., the only state is California, and the only city, is San Francisco."
The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco host the first major exhibition devoted to the life and works of Edward Hicks, a 19th-century Quaker minister and painter, whose interpretations of The Peaceable Kingdom are among the most beloved paintings in American art. Since their re-discovery in the 1930s, Hicks's deceptively simple, seemingly child-like depictions of the animal world have delighted viewers of all ages.