De Young Gallery

My second day in the USA. Emily, Greg and I went to the Toyota dealer in Palo Alto to pick up their (semi)-new Camry this morning and, having returned it to their Mountain View apartment, we headed off for San Francisco  60km up the bay. Although cold, it was quite a nice day in the sense that the sun was shining, and lots of others must have opted for a day out as the freeway was busy. We headed to the De Young Museum / gallery in the Golden Gate Park for lunch, a part of SF I'd never previously visited, although I've been to the city many times over the years. The lunch was reminiscent of the one I had with Rebecca and Max last year at the Tate Modern - delicious. We sat outside in the sculpture garden amidst items like the safety pin, field of apples and synthetic rock attached.

Then Greg headed off to see some down-under friends who lived nearby, while Em and I toured the museum's contents. The main attraction was the Olmec art dating from c.1000 to 400 BCE. This was a blockbuster exhibition a bit like the Terracotta Warriors at the Art Gallery of NSW reported earlier in these pages - and from a similar period of time. Of course, they could not have influenced each other because the Olmecs were in Mexico (pre-Mayan) and the Qin Empire unified what is now China. That said, there were amazing similarities in the types and qualities of artifacts shown in the two exhibitions, and some big differences. Most notably, the Olmecs were stone masons rather than working with china and terracotta and there were some huge stone heads or other body parts on display carved into blocks of granite or other igneous material. Anyway, the exhibition was just as instructive and interesting as the earlier one and very enjoyable.

After visiting that part of the museum, Emily and I took a lift to a viewing platform on the ninth floor of the administrative block alongside to see SF from above. The attached picture show the wonderful view the greeted us all around: from the Presidio to the north (with the pylons of the Golden Gate Bridge poking up above the hills); to the coastal scenery of Marin County to the north-west; to the city centre lying eastwards; and across the science museum to the south.

After soaking up the views we spent the rest of the afternoon looking at displays of American art and we were the most interested in quite a large collection of modern art. Some of it was difficult to understand and seemed more or less pointless; other items often had little point, but were exquisitely executed with great skill and aesthetic quality: sculptures, furniture, photographs, and paintings in a wide variety of materials. It was all quite entertaining and, indeed, we ran out of time before the gallery closed. Exiting the building was quite a shock - it was cold! Rather than stand around awaiting Greg's appearance with the car, we headed into the gardens separating the science museum from the De young, and especially to a dude standing on a plinth. It turned out to be Francis Scott Key, a lawyer and amateur poet who wrote the Star Spangled Banner in 1814. I first encountered this Baltimore citizen three years ago when visiting Fort McHenry at the entrance to Baltimore's harbour. His poem, which became the US National Anthem, was penned to celebrate the defeat of the British navy at that time and we heard a rendition at the fort. Greg eventually turned up and we sped home to Mountain View amidst the gathering dusk. All in all it was a good day.

AS