The Observation Deck at the de Young
Masks
On Wednesday my Aunt Mary and I went to the de Young Museum at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. The museum was damaged in the ‘89 earthquake and has only recently been rebuilt, I believe. We saw an exhibit of Ruth Asawa work. Most of the exhibit consisted of intricate hanging woven wire sculptures with many layers inset in each other. I liked them quite a bit, but I was even more fascinated by a small set of pages from her notebooks. The exhibit did a really good job of focusing on her development as an artist through the years as she discovered and invented various techniques and then came back to revisit them years later. It’s not the kind of art that I usually seek out, and it was nice to have an opportunity to see a really good exhibit of it.
After that we wandered up through a large section of Oceanic and Affrican art. I gather that in the old space they never had the room to keep all of it on display, but here it was one of the largest collections that I’ve seen and some of it was really fascinating.
After that we caught the exhibit on Gee’s Bend Quilts and headed up to the observation deck at the top of the tower. I really appreciated that because I haven’t been to San Francisco since I was little and it provided a very nice overview of the city. I’m a big fan of stepping back from the edge at decks like that and watching the people standing in front of the city sweeping out below, rather than staring directly out the windows. I’ve put up a few more pictures on Flickr starting here.
