DeYoung Press Opening

The press opening for the DeYoung Museum was a qualified success. There are still a few kinks to be worked out— lights to be put up, objects to be mounted, etc.— before the grand opening Saturday, and much of the landscape was still in final polish stages, but that's to be expected.

Here's what I found impressive, of the very little bit I got to see:

The building. Okay, yes, it's postpostmodern. It's made of metal. The metal is patinaed a very dark copper, with some iridescence. It's also perforated, with the inner structure of the walls showing through in places. However, the patina gives the building a much warmer feeling than any other metal building I've seen, and the perforations soften the hard edges. The building is also very well planned around its function— for instance, the entire basement level can be locked off from the upper galleries, allowing it to be rented out for events without endangering the objects upstairs. The parking garage is so designed that large objects and installations can be trucked right into the museum without having to spend time in secondary storage. Inside, the design of the building is fairly minimal, which allows the art to be displayed to the best advantage. The most important thing about the museum building is that it makes a good museum, and this does.

The Hatshepsu exhibit. The objects are impressive, and it's nicely mounted, if not innovative. The curator for that exhibit really knows what she's talking about.

The grounds are gorgeous. And in the sculpture garden, gingko trees (wisdom and longevity) are paired with sulptures of apples (immortality and learning), which I think is cool. Awesome lights in front, as well— they look like glowing pitcher plants.

The curators are great.

But:

The watchtower looks, as my classmate pointed out, almost exactly like the structure the Jawas went back to in Star Wars.

I'm still creeped out by the Oceanic Art collection. Something different needs to be done there; I'm not quite sure what.

What's up with the lights in the cafe? They look like candy. They're silly. You can see the compact fluourescent bulbs through some, but not all, of them. They're very 70's. They have to go.