De Young Museum

The American art collection consists of over 1,000 paintings,[4] 800 sculptures, and 3,000 decorative arts objects.[5] With works ranging from 1670 to the present day, this collection represents the most comprehensive museum survey of American art in the American West and is among the top ten collections nationally that encompass the entire history of non-indigenous American art. Since its inception in the Fine Arts Building at the California Midwinter International Exposition of 1894 in Golden Gate Park, its subsequent institutionalization in the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum in 1924, and its reinstallation in the new de Young in 2005, the permanent collection has evolved exponentially.

Rainy Season in the Tropics by Frederic Edwin Church (1866)

In 1978, the American art collections were transformed by the decision of John D. Rockefeller III and Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller to donate their renowned collection of 110 paintings, 29 drawings, and 2 sculptures to the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco where they would be on view at the de Young. His bequest in 1979 together with her bequest in 1993 are among the Fine Arts Museums’ single most important gifts of art.

The de Young's chronological survey of American art includes galleries devoted to art in the following areas: Native American and Spanish Colonial; Anglo-Colonial; Federal era art and Neoclassical; Victorian genre and realism; trompe-l'œil still life; the Hudson River School, Barbizon, and Tonalism; Impressionism and the Ashcan School; Arts and Crafts; Modernism; Social Realism and American Scene; Surrealism and Abstraction; Beat, Pop, and Figurative; and Contemporary.

Although the permanent collection is national in scope, art made in California from the Gold Rush era to the present day is also on display in the de Young. Important California collections with national significance include examples of Spanish colonial, Arts and Crafts, and Bay Area Figurative and Assemblage art. Important among them are the most significant museum collections of works by Bay Area painter Chiura Obata and sculptor Ruth Asawa.

The permanent collection galleries integrate decorative arts objects with paintings and sculptures, emphasizing the artistic, social, and political context for the works on display. While essentially chronological, the installation also juxtaposes works from different cultures and time periods to emphasize the historical connections between works in the collection. Painters with paintings in this art museum include; John Singleton Copley, John Vanderlyn, Thomas Cole (Prometheus Bound), Thomas Hill, Thomas Wood (Newspaper Vendor), Samuel Brookes, John Peto, Childe Hassam, Edmund C. Tarbell (The Blue Veil), George Hitchcock, Maynard Dixon, Otis Oldfield, Granville Redmond, Thomas Hart Benton (Susannah and the Elders), David Park, Richard Diebenkorn, Mel Ramos, and Wayne Thiebaud.

In January 2017, the institution announced a significant new addition to its collection of American Art through the acquisition of 62 works by 22 contemporary African American Arts, including Thornton Dial's Blood And Meat: Survival For the World (1992) and Lost Cows (2000-1), Joe Light's Dawn (1988), Jessie T. Pettway's Bars and String-Pierced Columns (1950's), Lonnie Holley's Him and Her Hold the Root (1994) and Joe Minter's Camel at the Watering Hole (1995) The works are currently exhibited in Revelations: Art from the African American South, on view until April 1, 2018.^[12].

The de Young is also opening the first-ever retrospective of Feminist Art pioneer Judy Chicago in 2020, forty years after her landmark installation The Dinner Party (1974–79) made its debut in San Francisco.[6]

Archives of American Art

Since 1991, the American Art Department has housed a set of the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art microfilm collection. In conjunction with the Bothin Library and department research files, the American Art Study Center is the most important research center for American art on the West Coast.

In 1988, the Fine Arts Museums made a commitment to collect international contemporary art. In addition to works in traditional media, this commitment has expanded the museums’ holdings of works in new or multiple media––including installation and conceptual works, video and other time-based media, and photography and other lens-based media––to more accurately reflect contemporary art practice.

Recent contemporary acquisitions include Wall of Light Horizon (2005), by Sean Scully and signature sculptures by Zhan Wang and Cornelia Parker. The strength of the collection lies in artists associated with California, including Piotr Abraszewski, Christopher Brown, Squeak Carnwath, Jim Christiansen, Robert Colescott, Hung Liu, Bruce Nauman, Rachel Neubauer, Ed Ruscha and Masami Teraoka.

Lens-based and time-based media represent a new area of growth, with works by Nigel Poor, Catherine Wagner, Rebeca Bollinger, Alan Rath and the Propeller Group. The museums have also acquired works by international artists such as Anish Kapoor, Odd Nerdrum, Gottfried Helnwein, Doris Salcedo, David Nash, Barbara Hepworth, and Richard Deacon.

The Fine Arts Museums’ textiles collection[7] boasts more than 13,000 textiles and costumes from around the world. It is one of the largest and most comprehensive collections of its type in the United States. It comprises costume and costume accessories; loom-woven textiles; non-woven fabrics such as bark cloth, felt, and knitting; and objects whose primary decoration is produced through techniques such as beading and embroidery. With holdings that span two and a half millennia and represent cultures from 125 countries, the textile arts collection enables the museums to draw connections across cultures and enrich its other collections.

Highlights from the collection include extraordinary Turkmen carpets, rare 12th through 15th-century Central Asian and North Indian silks, the most important group of Anatolian kilims outside Turkey, European tapestries, and contemporary fiber art.

The de Young has exhibited fashion since the 1930s and is known for its 20th-century couture, particularly from the post–World War II era, with pieces by Dior, Balenciaga, Madame Grès, Yves Saint Laurent, Chanel, Ralph Rucci, and Kaisik Wong. There are equally compelling collections of 18th and 19th-century European fans, an excellent lace collection, a spectacular group of European ecclesiastical vestments and furnishings, and a growing collection of contemporary wearable art. With holdings that span two and a half millennia and represent cultures from 125 countries, the textile arts collection enables the museums to draw connections across cultures and enrich other areas of the permanent collection.

Throughout the year, the Lonna and Marshall Wais and Diana Dollar Knowles and Gorham B. Knowles costume and textile arts gallery hosts several exhibitions featuring the diverse range of these collections as well as important traveling exhibitions. In addition to the larger rotating textiles presentations in the main gallery, the T.B Walker Family Education Gallery houses small, didactic displays and contains study drawers illustrating representative pieces from the entire collection accentuate different textile techniques.

In August 2017 The Summer of Love Experience: Art, Fashion, and Rock & Roll marked another highlight at the de Young. The exhibition celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Summer of Love[8] and featured fashion from the late sixties from the museum's permanent collection and on loan from Bay Area independent designers. A record-breaking 270,000 visitors[9] from around the world came to the de Young to relive the Summer of Love.

In the fall of 2018, the de Young organized Contemporary Muslim Fashions. The exhibition explored Muslim female dress codes from multiple communities, cultures and religious interpretations, starting at the turn of the millennium.[10] It was the first large scale exploration of the topic at an art institution,[11] and included emerging and established designers and artists from Europe, the Middle East, South East Asia and the US.[12] The exhibition will travel to Museum Angewandte Kunst in Frankfurt in the spring of 2019.[13]

More than 1,400 stellar examples from the eastern Sudan, the Guinea coast, west and central Africa, eastern and southern Africa, and elsewhere on the continent are included in the Fine Arts Museums’ African art collection[14] at the de Young. The African art collection is presented thematically rather than geographically, emphasizing the aesthetic and expressive qualities of the art.

The Oceanic collections[15] were charter collections of the de Young, their nucleus formed in 1894 at the California Midwinter International Exposition in Golden Gate Park. Additional Oceanic works of sculpture, basketry, tapa, ceramics, and lithics have since been acquired, bringing the holdings to more than 3,000. Highlights of the collection include a 10-foot (3.0 m) housepost from the Iatmul people of the Sepik River in Papua New Guinea, a group of brightly painted carvings used in malanggan ceremonials of New Ireland, a roll of feather money from Nindu Island of Santa Cruz, a fan from the Marquesas Islands of Polynesia, a rare navigation figure from the Caroline Islands of Micronesia, and a selection of powerful wood carvings from the Maori peoples of New Zealand.

The Art of the Americas collections[16] are of national significance to art history, anthropology, and world history, and they have helped establish the de Young as a primary source for cultural research and study. The extensive collection of ancient American and Native American art comprises nearly 2,000 works of art from Meso-America, Central and South America, and the West Coast of North America. Art from cultures indigenous to the American continents was a defining feature of the museum's charter collection and continues to be an area of significant growth. Special galleries are devoted to ancient objects from Mexico, including an outstanding grouping of Teotihuacan murals.

The permanent collection contains also some works by European painters, such as Salvador Dali.[17]