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Blog Category: Exhibitions

Finding Hidden Treasures at the San Francisco Fall Antiques Show

Posted by Sarah Bailey Hogarty on October 25, 2011

The annual San Francisco Fall Antiques Show (SFFAS) has longstanding ties with the Fine Arts Museums, sharing benefactors, lenders, board members, and volunteers, including special project curator of European Decorative Arts and Sculpture, Maria Santangelo. For the past several years, Santangelo has donated her curatorial capabilities to the exhibition that serves as the centerpiece of the fair.

Maria Santangelo

Maria Santangelo

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Word Gallery: Impressionism

Posted by Sarah Bailey Hogarty on October 19, 2011

Throughout art history, scholars have devised a special vocabulary to talk about art. These terms are very useful, but they are not always self-explanatory. Enter into the art historical word gallery, where we provide some definitions commonly used to describe artistic styles, techniques, or movements in art.

Impressionism

Camille Pissarro. Apple Harvest, 1888. Oil on canvas. Dallas Museum of Art, Munger Fund, 1955.17.M

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When Paper is More than a Surface

Posted by Colleen Terry on October 6, 2011

Paper is fundamental to traditional printmaking, but paper as a medium can be as diverse as the images printed on its surface. Surface Tension: Contemporary Prints from the Anderson Collection (on view at the de Young through January 15, 2012) puts paper front and center, exploring the ways in which artists from the late 1960s to today engage paper as more than just a surface.

Though no ink touched the paper in Josef Albers's Embossed Linear Construction series (1969),  he used embossing, a traditional printmaking process, to transform ordinary sheets of watercolor paper into subtle bas-relief constructions that extend into the viewer’s space.

Josef Albers (American, 1888–1976). Embossed Linear Construction 2-D, from a portfolio of 8 inkless embossings, 1969. Inkless embossing on 300-gram Arches watercolor paper. Anderson Graphic Arts Collection, gift of the Harry W. and Mary Margaret Anderson Charitable Foundation. 1996.74.17.8

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More Real than Real: The Photography of Ralph Eugene Meatyard

Posted by Sarah Bailey Hogarty on October 6, 2011

Photographs, a ubiquitous component of contemporary life, serve as an ever-evolving record of our lives and those of our friends and family. Children provide an immediate source of inspiration, and many new parents quickly adopt the role of amateur photographer. But few become as skilled and engaged in the medium as Ralph Eugene Meatyard, whose haunting photography is presented in the exhibition Ralph Eugene Meatyard: Dolls and Masks, opening at the de Young this Saturday, October 8.

Untitled, ca. 1960–1962, gelatin silver print, museum purchase, John Pritzker Fund, 2011.4.1

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Word Gallery: Still Life

Posted by Sarah Bailey Hogarty on September 29, 2011

Throughout art history, scholars have devised a special vocabulary to talk about art. These terms are very useful, but they are not always self-explanatory. So we thought we'd take you into the art historical word gallery to provide some definitions commonly used to describe artistic styles, techniques or movements in art.

Still Life

Willem Claesz. Heda (Haarlem 1594–1680 Haarlem), Still Life with Glasses and Tobacco, 1633. Oil on panel, 20 x 29 3/4 inches (50.8 x 75.6 cm). The Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo Collection. Image courtesy Peabody Essex Museum

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The Kilims of Caroline and H. McCoy Jones

Posted by Sarah Bailey Hogarty on September 22, 2011

In 1980, H. McCoy Jones announced that he and his wife, Caroline, would donate his entire private collection of more than six hundred Central Asian carpets to the Fine Arts Museums. Two years later, Cathryn M. Cootner was appointed as the de Young’s first textile curator (her tenure as curator-in-charge would run through 1995). Cootner’s robust acquisition and exhibition program transformed the Museums into a well-respected repository for high quality textiles and oriental rugs. Chief among these was a watershed exhibition of Caroline McCoy-Jones’s unsurpassed collection of Anatolian kilims in 1991. We took a moment to sit down with Cathy Cootner to reflect on the McCoy Joneses and their spectacular kilims twenty years later.

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