{"id":158,"date":"2018-07-22T03:19:35","date_gmt":"2018-07-22T03:19:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.freudenheim.com\/public_html\/tom\/?p=158"},"modified":"2018-07-22T03:19:35","modified_gmt":"2018-07-22T03:19:35","slug":"surprises-in-san-francisco","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.freudenheim.com\/public_html\/tom\/2018\/07\/22\/surprises-in-san-francisco\/","title":{"rendered":"Surprises in San Francisco"},"content":{"rendered":"

I thought I knew the SF museums well, but it\u2019s fun to keep finding new ways of seeing familiar places.
\nSFMOMA – Oy! I forgot how much the new building mimics NYMoMA (or the last iteration, not the coming one). Long lines for both tickets and members area (I chose to show my ICOM card at the tickets line, which moved faster than the members line). Then the awkwardly placed ropes and stanchions for crowd control and entry; it\u2019s as if they didn\u2019t know they would have ticketed entry when they designed that area, which is awkward to access in any case. \u00a0But the real discovery(?) for me was the Magritte exhibition.<\/a> He\u2019s really boring (or at least they make him seem so), and a painter of limited abilities. The familiar stuff is fine (but a yawn in this installation, and in the hi-falutin art-speak on the wall panels). When he experiments(?), he\u2019s just not a very good painter (which is why we haven\u2019t seen those paintings in most previous exhibitions). As for the collections, it reminded me of the menus that say \u201cmarket price\u201d on some items. It\u2019s filled with too much of the same \u201cgreat names of modern\/contemporary art\u201d and too little else. (It\u2019s difficult not to remember that many of these paintings would fetch more than Rembrandt, et al, at auction.) One can only hope that determined visitors (there didn\u2019t appear to bee too many) will manage to find the \u201cold\u201d SFMoMA collections, hidden near the entry level, where the spectacular Haas Matisse<\/a>\u00a0is still spectacular, as are a lot of other wonderful works that remind you SFMoMA was once an early force in shaping American museum directions in contemporary art (e.g., Grace McCann Morley, etc. \u2014 she was also a pioneering woman museum director: 1935!!). \u00a0And it\u2019s here that you will encounter some (if not enough) of the California artists you might have thought would make it upstairs in the new building.<\/p>\n

The Contemporary Jewish Museum – It was never high on my list of admirable places, especially since the raison d\u2019\u00eatre was sort of like \u201cif we are cultured and community-minded, then that\u2019s the same as being Jewish [since we really wish we weren\u2019t Jewish in the first place]\u201d. \u00a0And it includes another one of Libeskind\u2019s unusable (common euphemism for them: \u201cchallenging\u201d) spaces. \u00a0So I was pleasantly surprised at the current exhibition \u201cContraption<\/a>: Rediscovering California Jewish Artists\u201d<\/a> (16 of them) \u2014 a concept that would ordinarily be a complete turnoff to me. \u00a0But starting with Rube Goldberg (one of the few here actually born in California), this is an eclectic and interesting exhibition, with a range of artists and ideas that are much more engaging than the limited tastes shown at SFMoMA, and sort of unified by the concept that their \u201cwork refers to the machine either literally or metaphorically.\u201d \u00a0It even includes an amazing huge interactive piece by Bernie Lubell, who was once (long ago) married to my wife\u2019s cousin.<\/p>\n

Legion of Honor – A bunch of not very interesting Julian Schnabel \u201cpaintings\u201d interspersed with Rodin don\u2019t make a convincing case for his current work. (Maybe he should stick with film?). And I forgot how uneven (that\u2019s the kindest word) the European collection is, although there are some zappo paintings (just not enough of them). But there\u2019s a wonderful small Cubist illustrated artist book exhibition downstairs. And a Pre-Raphaelite show, which I skipped, because my ICOM card was only good for general admission and I wasn\u2019t about for fork over $28 for a special exhibition.<\/p>\n

DeYoung – I\u2019m not a big fan of the Herzog\/deMeuron building (and in any case you only get to sort of see it all if you\u2019re at the Academy of Science across the plaza). But I thought the range of what\u2019s on view very impressive. The American art is really exciting (thanks to the Rockefellers, but not only to them), with whole groups of substantial first rate works (landscapes, portraits, trompe l\u2019oeil<\/p>\n

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genre, etc.) and good wall panels to tell you something about each room (the Legion does that as well, but has less to work with). The display of \u201ccraft\u201d artists (loathesome way of categorizing, my term, not theirs) is also great, mostly segregated from the rest of the art, but occasionally not. Why don\u2019t we see Voulkos\"\",<\/p>\n

\"\"DeStaebler,<\/p>\n

Viola Frey\"\" or a slew of these other artists at SFMoA (which has them in the collection)? \u00a0The strength and range of the Saxe gifts is super, especially since it does so much to expand our understanding of an important aspect of California art. There\u2019s also a powerful Judy Dater exhibition,<\/p>\n

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as well as an exciting installation of their modern\/contemporary collection that juxtaposes interesting works with one another.<\/p>\n

\"\" \u00a0The deYoung shows real respect for California artists (which is more than you can say for SFMoMA). It may not be a truly encyclopedic museum, but it is energetic and exciting in its range. (Again I didn\u2019t see the special exhibition, \u201cCult of the Machine\u201d, because I wasn\u2019t about to pay $28.)
\nMoral(?) of the story: You need to keep going back to familiar places because you see them differently every time you visit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I thought I knew the SF museums well, but it\u2019s fun to keep finding new ways of seeing familiar places. SFMOMA – Oy! I forgot how much the new building mimics NYMoMA (or the last iteration, not the coming one). Long lines for both tickets and members area (I chose to show my ICOM card … Continue reading “Surprises in San Francisco”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freudenheim.com\/public_html\/tom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freudenheim.com\/public_html\/tom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freudenheim.com\/public_html\/tom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freudenheim.com\/public_html\/tom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freudenheim.com\/public_html\/tom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=158"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.freudenheim.com\/public_html\/tom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":174,"href":"http:\/\/www.freudenheim.com\/public_html\/tom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158\/revisions\/174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freudenheim.com\/public_html\/tom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freudenheim.com\/public_html\/tom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freudenheim.com\/public_html\/tom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}