Elder Arts 2005 features approximately 100 works of art from two programs of Eldergivers, an organization that fosters positive connections between elders and the wider community. Art with Elders places professional artists in long-term care facilities to offer residents an opportunity to explore their creative abilities in weekly painting classes and also exhibits in a variety of public locations the art produced in these classes. Elder Arts Celebrations exhibits the art of alumni, faculty, and students over the age of 65 from Bay Area art schools.

This exhibition inaugurates the de Young’s exciting new textile galleries in grand fashion with a look back over 110 years of the museum’s textile and costume collecting, along with a glimpse into future collecting directions. Old favorites and new surprises make up the approximately 100 objects on view, including European couture fashion, contemporary fiber art, Central Asian carpets, Indian trade cloth, textiles and costume from Africa and Indonesia, and fragments of the costly fabrics that once fueled trade along the Silk Road.

Shortly after the development of photography in France and England at the end of the 1830s, the medium was introduced with great fanfare and enthusiasm to the United States. Since those early days, photography has become an important creative medium in American cultural life through its application in the areas of fine art, science, and documentary projects. The de Young Museum has played an important role in the history of American photography, having hosted the historic F64 group exhibition in 1932.

In 1978, Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd gave the Fine Arts Museums more than one hundred works of American art. This selection from that gift, spanning a century, reveals the breadth of their collecting and their commitment to aesthetic quality. Many of the works reveal artists’ wonder at what they conceived of as the “New World.” Even as they excitedly shared their sense of the novelty of American culture, however, artists began to romanticize the nation’s past.