The New de Young Building

The current building is much smaller than the original complex, which included the Asian Art Museum building on the west side. When the Asian Art Museum packed up its collection and moved downtown, that left more surrounding space, and the original three-acre plot was expanded to seven acres. While seen as a 'land grab' at the time, the addition of open space on the east and west sides of the building gave lots of room for renowned landscape architect, Berkeley professor and Oakland resident Walter Hood to work his magic.

At the opening remarks, Harry and Dede were quick to point out that this was the largest private gift ever given to The City, and maybe the largest private gift ever given to the public. But Dede made a telling comment when she joked "We wanted this for the people of San Francisco, even though they didn't know they wanted it." While the structure was explicitly designed to be as open and inviting to the public as possible, you can't shake the sense that you're very much in Dede's art salon. The old building's interior was dominated by the Hearst Court. The new building's central feature is the Wilsey Court, and features a gargantuan Gerhard Richter commissioned and approved by Dede herself.

After the comments, we decided to eschew the guided tours of the collections and just wander. Architect Jacques Herzog explained that "the biggest challenge was to bring the collection together." "We wanted to reflect the diversity of San Francisco non-hierarchically." This means that there are surprising juxtapositions -- while African and Oceania art sit side by side on the upper floor, the first-floor galleries are a hodgepodge, and a wander through the rooms will take you from post-modernist figurative paintings by local artists, 20th century photography, Art Nouveau sculpture and pre-Columbian artifacts.

The experience of the building, however, is much more fluidly logical. Starting at the sidewalk along the south entrance, where the original palms from the exposition still sway, a thin crack in the flagstones leads you straight into the outer courtyard, where the crack begins to wind through the rough quarried rock arranged outside the door. The piece, by artist-of-the-moment Andy Goldsworthy, is meant to evoke the history of earthquakes in the region (especially the latest, which doomed the former structure) while also inviting users in by softening the transition from the natural features of the park into the very modern features of the museum.

To the right as you enter are the Koret auditorium and the elevator which goes to the tower. To the left is Wilsey Court. This is the central 'wing' of the three wing building, each running parallel from east to west. Our first stop was to the top of the tower where the view of The City is undeniably spectacular (thanks to a friendly de Young staffer, we got in a little before the official noon opening). Seeing the building from above only confirmed our 'SS de Young' impression, though, as we looked out toward the Pacific. On the way back down, we ran into none other than Mercedes Bass, lending a little society gloss to a gathering largely composed of fellow hacks like Jan Wahl, whom we spotted at lunch.

One of the best features of the space is the use of light. Architect Pierre de Meuron was inspired by the play of light in a canopy of trees, and used an interesting process to mimic it in the panels which clad the building and shade the windows. Using digital photography and image processing tools, he took photos of light through trees, blurred them, rasterized them into a halftone matrix, and then employed a factory in the US which had special computer-controlled machinery which punched and embossed the copper based on the digital pattern. Skylights in the Wilsey court and the interior landscapes of trees and shale open to the sky and surrounded by plexiglass bring more light and natural context into the space.

The west end galleries suffer somewhat in their austerity relative to the magnificent wood-paneled rooms on the second floor. As you work your way west, you'll find the museum shop and cafe. While bright and welcoming, and promises to feature artisan foods sourced from local farmers, we thought the chairs were horrid (but maybe that's just us). We didn't really get a chance to experience the expanse of the 'porch' overhanging the patio on the far west end because a tent was installed for the opening-week festivities. But de Meuron specifically alluded to the (apparently) American tradition of socializing at your doorstep. While he said that the overhang was almost a victim of budgetary constraints, he felt it was necessary to balance the tower to the east.

The real treat of the day was a walk through the grounds of the museum led by Walter Hood. De Meuron had pointed up how maintaining a sense of continuity with the old site and buildings was an important aspect of the planning, and no where is this more evident than in the sensitive treatment of the landscape. The "Pool of Enchantment" has been reborn, and is joined by a "Garden of Enchantment" that will feature vine-covered trellises, "where couples can make out," joked Hood. The Doré Vase is featured prominently along the concourse, joining other pieces of original sculptures from the old grounds.

While the naturalist in us lamented the dearth of native plants, Hood made the right moves in terms of maintaining existing trees (such as the palms along the concourse) and choosing new trees based on their relationship to other areas of the park. The sculpture garden, for instance, has the same gingko, Japanese maple, cypress and camelia that can be found next door in the Tea Garden. "We mined plants from the park nursery, so we knew they would do well here."

The sculpture garden, which extends past the end of the patio, is a real treasure, though some will never get past the Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen Corridor Pin, Blue, especially if they're not fans of Cupid's Span on the Embarcadero. But a postmodernist piece by Juan Muñoz of children having a conversation contrasts well with the modernist abstraction of a Henry Moore. But the real prize is the James Turrell piece at the end of a hidden walk. Commissioned especially for the site, his Skyscape asks the viewer to reconsider the horizon by exploding it from the horizontal dimension into the vertical. Evoking a Buddhist temple or Native American sweat lodge with a circular opening in the spherical roof, one could spend hours in quiet contemplation of the clouds.

Ultimately, the success or failure of the design is in how it's used -- Jacques Herzog admitted that there was no way the architects could predict emotional responses to the building itself. If the public doesn't come, will the private funding dry up, leaving an expensive maintenance bill for The City? Will a successful building improve the fortunes of the Fine Arts Museums of the San Francisco, leading to better traveling exhibitions and acquisitions that might improve the quality and unity of the de Young's collection? Will the Music Concourse become the pedestrian heaven promised by Proposition J? Nobody knows. But the building has succeeded in capturing our attention, and we look forward to watching it get comfortable with its surroundings as the plants grow and the patina develops, so ask us again in a few years.