Posted on 10/14/2005 10:08:33 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - San Francisco may finally have built its own masterpiece of modern architecture -- a towering $200 million cooper-clad museum near the Golden Gate bridge.
That would mark a big development in a city known for hilly Victorian neighborhoods and historic cable cars and where residents have long focused on preservation rather than embracing the kind of modern architecture symbolized by the new de Young museum, its supporters say.
So far, the de Young, which opens on Saturday, has struck the chord its backers had sought with critics hailing it as a "museum for the 21st century" and a "notch below perfection.
Sitting in Golden Gate Park, the three-level museum features a gently twisting tower that rises above the main building. The renowned Swiss architectural firm Herzog & de Meuron sought to make the museum unique to San Francisco and its famously fickle weather by designing a structure that incorporates, rather than dominates, the park's constantly shifting natural surroundings, said Deborah Frieden, the museum's project director.
"Unlike cities like Paris and New York, San Francisco has not paid attention enough to the great architectural accomplishments of its time," Frieden said. "This is the first great statement."
The building's copper skin mimics filtered light through a canopy of trees to create an abstract pattern that will turn to green over time due to exposure to the sun, rain and fog. From afar, the building seems to fit snugly into the surrounding landscape.
Inside, visitors flow through different wings that bend and come together to give the museum an organic feel that is reinforced with plenty of natural and artificial light.
"The architects wanted the building to have certain qualities of the natural landscape that are constantly changing," Frieden said. "In different lights, for example, the skin has different qualities. It changes with the sunlight. It changes with the fog."
Turning the de Young into a cultural cornerstone for San Francisco has not been easy. The original de Young, which was built in the park for the California Midwinter International Exposition in 1894, was closed about five years after the city said the slapped-on braces strengthening it after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake were insufficient.
A cash-strapped City Hall had no money to repair the original and voters twice rejected bond proposals to pay for a new one, putting at risk the museum's future. Finally, supporters raised about $200 million on their own and the original de Young was demolished to make way for the new one.
Not everyone welcomed the new design. Some critics thought it was too tall. Others worried the nearly 300,000 square-foot building would dominate the landscape and upset the tranquillity of Golden Gate Park. Some simply thought it was too weird.
"The de Young is for better or worse a watershed in terms of San Francisco and the Bay Area being confronted with contemporary architecture," said John King, an architecture critic for the San Francisco Chronicle.
"This is a building that is very much in the vanguard of how some of the world's most creative and innovative architects are exploring the shape and form of a building and the materials that are used," he said.
Frieden said excitement surrounding the museum is spurring many collectors to donate art to the de Young, which houses American, Pacific Islander and African art.
Workmen finish up the landscaping outside the new M.H. de Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco, Tuesday Oct. 11, 2005. The new M.H. de Young Memorial Museum won't open to the public until this weekend, but for months critics have had a field day finding creative ways to deride the architectural design of San Francisco's fine arts showplace. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg)
Museum visitors at the main entrance of the deYoung Museum ponder 'Drawn Stone,' a site-specific commission by renowned British artist Andy Goldsworthy in San Francisco, Thursday Sept. 1, 2005. The new M.H. de Young Memorial museum won't open to the public until this weekend, but for months critics have been finding creative ways to deride the architectural design of San Francisco's latest cultural landmark. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg)
And here I was, looking for little cars as modern art...
Who proofreads this stuff?
de Young web site
http://www.thinker.org/deyoung/index.asp
"Unlike cities like Paris and New York, San Francisco has not paid attention enough to the great architectural accomplishments of its time," Frieden said. "This is the first great statement."
Ever hear of the GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE, you freaking MORON? How the hell did you ever get hired if this is what you believe? You can probably SEE it from your office, you filthy hack!
This new museum is butt ugly. It looks like a prison.
Luckily, the collection it will house is good, but like the MOMA, it's embarrassing. They could'nt even hire local architects, they had to import this bleak looking box of a building!
The de Young will be the newest and chicest homeless magnet.
I remember Golden Gate Park. Last time my wife and I visited the toilets in the restrooms were clogged to unuseability and the first bench we passed was inhabited by a delirious drug user mumbling to himself. Maybe they've cleaned it up for the weekend.
Any Steve Young memorabilia there?
Beats me.
His old Toyota maybe. ;-)
:)
FRISCO: City of great "art"
The steinhart is still there. I have never been there or to the old de Young. I want to go to the Legion of Honor sometime.
Hey numbnuts! It's called oxidation!
But I do not know if they are open. Monterey is expensive and overrated. Steinhart was a gem.
The Legion of Honor is a wonderful park, but the buildings are just big empty buildings, sometimes filled with wonderous art.
The outside is gorgeous, the inside, is well, inside...
empty unless there is something on display.
Well, geeeez, the homeless have a right to fine art too, dontcha know?
/sarc
And let's not forget "...with critics hailing it as a 'museum for the 21st century'.... The kiss of death right there.
After all,
1) there's nothing that gets so old, so fast as something "designed for the 21st century". Remember that millennium "designed for the 21st century" monstrosity in London?
2) when was the last time the great unwashed (a.k.a. general public) ever liked something the critics considered just too, too marvelous-for-words-,darling?
That looks like a prison yard, with the guard tower in the background.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.