The de Young Museum, formally the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, is named for early San Francisco newspaperman M. H. de Young. It sits in Golden Gate Park and is part of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, along with the Legion of Honor. Wikipedia says it drew 999,645 visitors in 2023, making it the 22nd most-visited museum in the United States.

A museum born at a world's fair

The museum opened in 1895 in the Egyptian Revival Fine Arts Building left over from the California Midwinter International Exposition of 1894. The 1906 earthquake badly damaged it, and it reopened in November 1907. A Spanish-Plateresque building by Louis Christian Mullgardt followed in 1919, with a central section and signature tower added in 1921 and a west wing in 1925, the year de Young died. The original Egyptian-style building was declared unsafe and torn down in 1929.

The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake severely damaged the museum again. The building was demolished and replaced. Wikipedia says the only original elements left from the old de Young are the vases and sphinxes near the Pool of Enchantment, plus the palm trees out front.

The copper building

Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron won the design competition in 1999, and the new museum was built from 2002 to 2005. The firm says it arranged the building in three parallel bands, like the fingers of a hand, so the park reaches into inner courtyards. For the facade, photos of backlit tree crowns were pixelated and enlarged, then rendered in embossed and perforated copper sheeting so light breaks through. The firm called it the world's biggest copper building once the cladding was finished.

A tower rises from the broadest band and lines up with the city's street grid. According to the architects, the lobby, main court, restaurant, museum store and children's gallery are open to park visitors free of charge, and the top of the tower has a panorama deck over the park and the city.

What's inside

When the Fine Arts Museums were combined in 1972, the de Young's European art went to the Legion of Honor, and the de Young took most of the anthropological holdings. Today it shows American art from the 17th to the 21st centuries, international contemporary art, textiles and costume, and art from the Americas, Oceania and Africa. The American collection alone has more than 5,000 objects. In 1978 John D. Rockefeller III and Blanchette Ferry Rockefeller gave their collection of 110 paintings. Wikipedia says the museum holds the most significant collections of work by Bay Area painter Chiura Obata and sculptor Ruth Asawa.

Plan a visit

Check famsf.org for current hours and ticket prices before you go. The de Young faces the Music Concourse, so it pairs well with the park's gardens: see Golden Gate Park garden hours this fall. Out at Lands End, the Sutro Baths ruins make a good second stop.