FAMSF Blog
Woman's headcover (adghar ibrdane tasslit), early to mid 20th century Morocco. Anti-Atlas, Ait Abdellah people, 61 x 33 7/16 in. FAMSF, museum purchase, Textile Arts Council Endowment Fund
Anne Getts, Mellon Assistant Textiles Conservator
On the Grid: Textiles & Minimalism, currently on view in the Textiles Gallery at the de Young, presented the textile conservation lab with a variety of mounting challenges. Among these challenges was determining the ideal way to display a dip-dyed and hand painted Moroccan woman’s headcover, or adghar ibrdane tasslit, with a bulky tassel located at each of the four corners.
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Photo by FAMSF
On June 1, Max Hollein became the new director of the Fine Arts Museums. Born in Vienna, Max comes to us most recently from Frankfurt, where he directed the Schirn Kunsthalle (since 2001), as well as the Städel Museum and the Liebieghaus Sculpture Collection (both since 2006). Max studied art history at the University of Vienna and business administration at the Vienna University of Economics and began his career at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. We asked members to send their own questions to ask our new director.
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L-R: Ed Ruscha, Rancho (detail), 1968. Oil on canvas, 60 x 54 in. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, gift of Steven and Alexandra Cohen, 2006; Ed Ruscha, There and Here, State II (detail), 2007. Color lithograph, 18 5/8 x 27 15/16 in. Gift of the Artist; Ed Ruscha, God Knows Where (detail), 2014. Acrylic on canvas, 48 x 48 in. Collection of Robert Lehrman, courtesy of Aimee and Robert Lehrman; Ed Ruscha, OK (State II) (detail), 1990. Color lithograph, 27 1/16 x 35 15/16 in. FAMSF, museum purchase, Mrs. Paul L. Wattis Fund. All images © Ed Ruscha
Along with a passion for California and the West Coast, a key theme in Ed Ruscha's work and Ed Ruscha and the Great American West is the abundance and playfulness of words. Throughout his career, Ruscha experimented with words, song lyrics and sayings, even filling notebooks with them and waiting for the moment that the temperature of a word becomes "really hot."
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Photo by FAMSF
In this post, Geneva Griswold, the Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in Objects Conservation, explains how she and her colleagues keep Auguste Rodin’s sculpture The Thinker looking its very best. Read on for more about how the job involves a propane torch, why boat exhaust is an issue, and how hard it is to get to that awkward spot on the back of the leg.
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Ed Ruscha, Pepto-Caviar Hollywood,1970. Color screenprint, 15 x 42 1/2 in. Published by Cirrus Editions, Los Angeles. Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Museum purchase, Mrs. Paul L. Wattis Fund, 2000.131.37.1 © Ed Ruscha
Howard Clinton Tibbitts, Grizzly Giant with Troop F in Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias, Yosemite National Park, 1899. Gelatin silver print, 39 3/8 x 29 7/16 in. Gift of the Southern Pacific Railroad Company
Wild West: Plains to the Pacific, now open at the Legion of Honor, includes a spectacularly large photograph from the Museums’ collection, taken by Howard Clinton Tibbitts (1863–1937). Tibbitts was a San Francisco–based photographer who documented the American West for the Southern Pacific Railroad’s magazine Sunset, still published today. This photograph from 1899 depicts members of the U.S. Cavalry’s Troop F, who were charged with the protection of Yosemite from 1883 until 1916.
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