Collection Articles
Mar 25, 2021
For myself, The de Young Open was an incredible opportunity to be introduced to artists with whose work I was not already familiar. Through the exhibition, the costume textile arts department was able to make key...
Mar 11, 2021
One of the most significant features of The de Young Open was the option for the artists to sell their works and retain all the proceeds. While the myth of the “starving artist” who lives and dies only for their...
Mar 4, 2021
I was an art history major as an undergraduate attending college at the height of the Vietnam War. Protests were a daily occurrence on campus and the anti-establishment tenor of the day forced me to confront an uncomfortable...
Feb 25, 2021
The Fine Arts Museums have acquired the “Catination” Storage Jar (April 12, 1836), an inscribed ceramic created by the American potter and poet David Drake (ca. 1800–ca. 1870s). Drake, who worked in the pottery...
Feb 11, 2021
February is also known as Black History Month, an observance that originated in the United States. Recently it has gained official recognition in Canada. (Interestingly, it is also celebrated in Ireland, the Netherlands, and...
Dec 9, 2020
The subject of power is all around us these days as people fill our streets, some with songs and signs calling for justice and change, and others waving flags and carrying guns and pushing against that tide. People power,...
Nov 13, 2020
Though not firmly identified, this may be the same artist who created portraits of the Freake and Gibbs families—the artist thus known as the Freake-Gibbs painter. The few surviving portraits from this period provide...
Nov 6, 2020
“What a strange power there is in clothing.” – Isaac Bashevis SingerJohn Singleton Copley was largely self-taught, using the few resources that were available to him in colonial Boston. By the time he was twenty,...
Oct 29, 2020
In the hands of the carver who made this sculpture, dynamics of power are expressed through a coded confluence of imagery. Though diminutive in scale, it is a grand representation of woman's ubiquitous power.This...
Oct 23, 2020
As we prepare to welcome the public back to the Legion of Honor, some of our masterpieces of European painting have also returned to the museum. Frequent visitors sometimes notice that their favorite painting isn’t hanging...