Photography illuminates the winter/spring season at San Francisco art museums
January 14, 2008
As new technology makes it easier for people to take and share quick snapshots on cell phones and PDAs, it’s sometimes hard to remember that photography can still be a deliberate art form. Three of San Francisco’s most prominent art museums haven’t forgotten, and over the coming months, each will showcase the work of photographers both iconic and emerging. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then these exhibitions speak volumes, and offer a compelling incentive to visit three of the City’s most important cultural centers.
de Young Museum
Located in Golden Gate Park, the de Young is San Francisco’s oldest museum. Its collections include American paintings, decorative arts, and crafts; arts from Africa, Oceania, and the Americas; and Western and non-Western textiles. Long known as the "City’s Museum," the de Young is particularly recognized for its many educational arts programs for children and adults. The de Young re-opened in a new state-of-the-art facility in Golden Gate Park in October 2005, and is one of San Francisco’s most acclaimed architectural achievements of recent decades.
On view through February 24 is Chim: The Photography of David Seymour (1911-1956), which includes more than 70 photographs spanning Chim’s career from the 1930s to 1956. David Seymour, better known as Chim, captured world events including the rise of Hitler, the Spanish Civil War, and the reconstruction of Europe after World War II.
As an unapologetic humanist, Chim’s subjects were often refugee children and scenes of struggle. He moved in film and art circles that led to extraordinary portraits of some of the leading personalities of the 20th century. Chim’s last photographs were taken in Egypt in 1956 during the Suez crisis, when his life was cut short by Egyptian machine gun fire.
Admission Information
Admission is free on the first Tuesday of each month. Regular admission is $10 for adults, $7 for seniors (65 and older), $6 for college students with ID, $6 for youth (ages 13-17), and free for children 12 and under. Take a MUNI bus to the museum and save your transfer ticket to receive a $2 discount on admission. Tickets to the de Young may be used on the same day for free admission to the Legion of Honor museum.
Hours: 9:30 a.m. - 5:15 p.m. Closed Mondays. Open Fridays until 8:45 p.m.
Legion of Honor
Built to commemorate Californian soldiers who died in World War I, the Legion of Honor is a beautiful Beaux-arts building located in San Francisco’s Lincoln Park. Overlooking the Pacific Ocean, the Golden Gate Bridge, and all of San Francisco, the Legion is most noted for its breathtaking setting. Its collections include a bronze cast of Rodin’s Thinker which sits in the museum’s Court of Honor, European decorative arts and paintings, Ancient art, and one of the largest collections of prints and drawings in the country.
Annie Leibovitz: A Photographer’s Life, 1990-2005, on view March 1 - May 25, presents a retrospective of Leibovitz’s professional photographs as well as those she has taken of her family and close friends, and thus presents a full view of a "photographer’s life." For decades, Leibovitz has captured the icons of popular culture with her award-winning photography for Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, and Vogue. As Leibovitz says: "I don’t have two lives. This is one life, and the personal pictures and the assignment work are all part of it."
Over 200 photographs are included in the exhibition, among them are portraits of the pregnant Demi Moore, Nelson Mandela in Soweto, and George W. Bush in the White House; searing photojournalism from the siege of Sarajevo; and haunting landscapes from the American West and Jordan. Leibovitz’s personal material reflects her talents in a way that differs from her public work, as demonstrated in the candid images of her parents and siblings, her three daughters, and her close friends.
San Francisco is the final U.S. venue before the exhibition tours overseas.
Admission Information
Admission is free on the first Tuesday of each month. Regular admission is $10 for adults, $7 for seniors (65 and older), $6 for youth (ages 13-17), and free for children 12 and under. Take a MUNI bus to the museum and save your transfer ticket to receive a $2 discount on admission. Tickets to the Legion of Honor may be used on the same day for free admission to the de Young Museum.
Hours: 9:30 a.m. - 5:15 p.m. Closed Mondays.
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA)
The first museum on the West Coast devoted solely to 20th century art, SFMOMA is a dynamic center for modern and contemporary art. The museum strives to engage and inspire a diverse range of audiences by pursuing an innovative program of exhibitions, education, publications, and collections activities.
An-my Le: Small Wars, on view January 26 - May 4, showcases the photography of Vietnamese American artist An-My Le. Le delves into Americans’ complicated relationship with war by turning her lens on two of the less familiar sides of conflict: reenactment and rehearsal.
With a style that mirrors documentary photography, Le depicts Vietnam War reenactors staging theatrical battles in the forests of Virginia, and in another series, soldiers at the military base in Twenty-nine Palms, California, training for the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — in both cases, warlike activities without the mortal dangers of war. This exhibition unites 50 large-format, black-and-white photographs from the two series, offering a novel perspective on military engagements that maintains a deliberate ambiguity.
Also opening on January 26 is an exhibit featuring Italian photographer Gabriele Basilico, on view through June 15. Basilico creates beautiful, often haunting portraits of urban environments that favor areas of transition and transformation. His photographs are marked by an eerie stillness — and a notable absence of people — that propels architecture and landscape to the forefront and turns the viewer’s attention to frequently overlooked places.
This exhibition presents a series of nearly 50 black-and-white and color photographs taken by Basilico at the invitation of SFMOMA during a month-long residency in the Bay Area last summer. Chronicling the impact of the technology boom on the region, this exhibition will be the first of an ongoing project focused on Silicon Valley, in which artists will document the area on film. Basilico’s objective style and affinity for observing marginalized urban settings in a classical mode promises a compelling counterpoint to future installments in the project.
Also upcoming at SFMOMA is Friedlander, a major retrospective survey of one of the most inventive and prolific careers in the history of photography. On view February 23 - May 18, this exhibit assembles the most comprehensive array of Lee Friedlander’s work to date — some 500 photographs spanning the 1950s to the present — for a stunning overview of his multifaceted career.
Friedlander trained his eye on the everyday — streets, cars, storefronts, billboards — capturing distinctly American images. His style is inflected by a sharp wit and sense of humor, frequently taking advantage of elements considered by most to be obstacles, including his own shadow.
Most prominent in this restrospective are several projects that offer a vivid and far-reaching vision of what Friedlander calls the "American social landscape." This central theme is supplemented with portraits, self-portraits, landscapes, still lifes, nudes, studies of people at work, and, exhibited for the first time, a current series of landscapes made in the American West.
Admission Information
Admission is free on the first Tuesday of each month. Regular admission is $12.50 for adults, $8 for seniors (62 and older), $7 for students with ID, and free for children 12 and under. Admission is half-price on Thursday evenings from 6-8:45 p.m.
Hours: 11:00 a.m. - 5:45 p.m. Closed Wednesdays. Open Thursdays until 8:45 p.m. During the summer, the museum opens one hour earlier, at 10:00 a.m.