This exhibition presents the photographs of Kael Alford (American, b. 1971) and Thorne Anderson (American, b. 1966), two American-trained photo journalists who documented the impact and aftermath of the US-led allied invasion of Iraq in 2003. They made these photographs during a two-year span that began in the months leading up to the allied invasion in spring 2003 and covers the emergence of the armed militias that challenged the allied forces and later the new central Iraqi government.

Crown Point Press at 50 marks the press’s 50th anniversary and features prints by 15 internationally renowned artists made at the press over the course of five decades. Some, such as Robert Bechtle and Wayne Thiebaud, have returned to the press throughout their careers; others, including Darren Almond, Chris Ofili, and Kiki Smith, are more recent additions to the roster. All share an enthusiasm for expanding their artistic practice by making prints.

To celebrate the 50-year anniversary of the studio glass movement, the Fine Arts Museums will present a small-focus exhibition of works by some of the medium’s pioneering artists, drawn from the collection of George and Dorothy Saxe and installed along the corridor adjacent to the Saxe Gallery for contemporary craft arts. To show both the artists’ personal evolutions and the evolution of the movement, the six-case installation will display an early and a late work each by Harvey Littleton, Dominick Labino, Dale Chihuly, William Morris, Thomas Patti, and Mark Peiser.

Boldly patterned with graphic designs, the bark cloth that is made by Ömie women in the Oro province of Papua New Guinea expresses a great diversity of abstracted elements from the natural world. The painted cloths can relay creation stories or represent tattoo patterns that were once important to initiation ceremonies. The making of contemporary bark cloth in the Ömie territory is the exclusive creative and spiritual domain of 71 women artists. The cloth is crafted only by female chiefs and only within the community’s territory.

This exhibition of more than 60 photographs and photographic montages from 1962 to the present traces the fascinating and wide-ranging career of Danny Lyon.  A leading and explosive figure in the American street photography movement of the 1960s, Lyon distinguished himself from his peers through his direct engagement with his subjects and his concern for those on the margins of society.

This special exhibition is dedicated to the life and work of the legendary dancer and choreographer Rudolf Nureyev (1938–1993). It will showcase more than 80 costumes and 50 photographs from the dancer’s personal collection, entrusted to the Centre national du costume de scène, France, by the Rudolf Nureyev Foundation, and will incorporate key loans from active ballet companies.

This exhibition of 20 rare works created, used and collected in the late 18th century and first decades of the 19th century in the Cook Islands, Austral Islands and the Society Islands highlights natural materials and artistic techniques used to create images of worship, sacred objects and everyday articles. One of the most compelling aspects of these works is their variety of realistic and highly abstracted figurative forms. All of the works in this exhibition have multivalent stories to reveal.

The year 2012 marks a milestone for Crown Point Press, Chuck Close and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. The Press, recognized for its importance as a print workshop specializing in etching, celebrates the 50th anniversary of its founding by Kathan Brown in 1962. Chuck Close made his first print, the landmark mezzotint Keith, at the press 10 years later in 1972, breaking artistic ground for the photo-realist artist and initiating a long relationship with the Press.

Drawing largely from the world-renowned collection of works on paper in the Fine Arts Museums’ Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, this exhibition examines a wide range of artworks from the 17th century. Complementing the upcoming Girl with a Pearl Earring at the de Young, opening in January 2013, Rembrandt’s Century sheds light on a fascinating roster of artistic personalities, both famous and forgotten, of the late Mannerist and Baroque eras.

The de Young and Girl with a Pearl Earring will be open on Memorial Day, Monday, May 27, from 9:30 am–5:15 pm.

The de Young will be the first venue in the American tour of paintings from the Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis, The Hague. This jewel box of a museum, housing one of the world's most prestigious collections of Dutch Golden Age paintings, has not lent a large body of works from its holdings in nearly 30 years. An extensive two-year renovation makes this extraordinary opportunity possible.