de Young Museum

Over the course of his meteoric career, Andy Warhol (1928–1987) used the medium of music to transform himself from fan, to record album designer, to producer, to celebrity night-clubber, to rock star. Warhol Live presents the first comprehensive exploration of Warhol’s work as seen through the lens of music. This exhibition brings together a wide variety of works depicting pop music royalty, including Elvis Presley, the Velvet Underground, Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones, Liza Minnelli, Grace Jones, Deborah Harry of Blondie, and Michael Jackson.

Just as abstraction has played a vital role in the history of modernist painting and sculpture, so too has it found expression in works by leading photographers of the 20th and 21st centuries. Toward Abstraction features the work of Edward Weston, Arthur Siegel, Harry Callahan, Lee Friedlander, Imogen Cunningham, and Robert Mapplethorpe. This exhibition showcases an important recent gift from the collection of David L. Davies and John D. Weeden, as well as selections borrowed from the Paul Sack Photographic Trust.

The past few years have marked a high point in the Fine Arts Museums’ acquisitions program, with many outstanding works of art joining the permanent collection. To showcase the highlights of our recent acquisitions, a small exhibition has been organized in the Barbara Carleton Gallery at the de Young. Here, you will see some of the finest acquisitions from all art departments of the Museums: American painting and sculpture, European painting and decorative arts, works on paper, textiles, ancient art, and art from Africa, Oceania, and the Americas.