THE SVANE GIFT @ THE DE YOUNG
art museums are my portal
Last Saturday I knew I had to get my artist’s date in but it was the end of the month, the 31st, and even driving out of the city to enjoy the great weather on top of Mount Tamalpais was out of the budget. I decided to go to the de Young museum where I’m already a member. Big, cool, interesting and for me on that Saturday, totally free.
As soon as I parked in Golden Gate Park I felt better than I had earlier that morning. Flowering trees stretched out over the walls of the Botanical Garden’s grounds and the whole of the park just embraced me in a warm hug of green. I passed the entrance to the Japanese Garden, which, like the Botanical Gardens, is also free for SF residents and offers flowers, water, comfort and solace as well as tea and dumplings under a small wooden structure. By the time I arrived at the front steps of the de Young I already wore an air of optimism.
I’ve written about the de Young before when I went to the Judy Chicago retrospective, because her Women and Smoke photos at the very end of the show blew my mind. I love land art and its been mostly men have who gotten credit for this genre. I think that Judy Chicago was WAY before her time with this series of naked painted women in colorful smoke in the desert. I was, like many others, not a fan of the smoke performance that went along with the retrospective–though unlike many others, I didn’t attend.
As it turns out I’ve really only scratched the surface of what the institution has to offer. In a mix of LA and NYC vibes, the real gems of the museum are a bit behind the curtain but also not by much. I only needed to ask a few questions and wander with a bit more openness to find my way to a whole bunch of amazing work, spaces and people.
When I arrived at the museum I had already been thinking that my artist’s dates had done just what they were supposed to do: allow me to follow my own instinct in the world and see what I might arrive at when I did–but also they had become lonely and I was looking for a way to make my practice more open and welcoming. My intention this time was to link up with some parts of the experience that included others. I would be a joiner.
There were two programs offered that day. The first was an opportunity to draw in the galleries upstairs, which you get to by marching up a very wide set of wooden steps. The second was a talk in the auditorium, which I thought had the potential to be stodgy but I WAS WRONG. It turns out that museum people are my people: I shouldn’t have been surprised. Years and years and years going to book readings and now I finally understand that I was in the wrong place all together. I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed one author reading except for Jamel Brinkley’s reading for his book A Lucky Man, but that’s because Jamel is a bonafide ART MONSTER. He’s like an alien creature that walks on earth, or a total God in the form of a humble gentle person, the best teacher, the best writer. My hero.
I asked a guest services person standing at the entry to the galleries where I should go before the first program began. She directed me to the Osher collection, which I heard as “OCEAN,” and so I was excited and disappointed because there was only one image of the sea. I don’t think I like American art unless it is made by a woman so I went in search of the Georgia O'Keeffe paintings that the guide promised were shown as a part of the group. I found them: a painting of a pear, a painting of her house and of another building, in other words, none of her good stuff. I continued around looking for pieces by women and found Sky Cathedral’s Presence by Louise Nevelson that knocked my socks off.
I should write way more about this piece but instead I want to take you to a room dedicated to the Svane Gift: a very new investment made by the founder of Zendesk. This fact is not at all publicized as a part of the exhibit and I had to dig a little to find the info on where the funds for the acquisitions had come from but the pieces in About Place, a portion of this recent collection, are outstanding.
You have Rupy C. Tut’s New Normal, in which two women face inward toward a burning panel and Clare Rojas’ painting, Walking in rainbow rain, of a solo person wandering through thin stripes of colorful lines while wearing a big jacket. Nearby two people sit in a sauna with a science fictional view behind them in Chelsea Ryoko Wong’s Mint Tea in the Sauna during Sunset and Katy Granman’s photos, Dail, Pacifica (II), Gail and Dale, Pacifica (II), and Gail, Pacifica (IV), capture what it feels like to be a person at sea. Miguel Arzabe’s Te Quiero Inti, didn’t do anything for me at first glance but then I looked closer and saw that the whole image was made out of woven material.
There was something else unusual about this collection, aside from it being so tight and well curated. The title cards were thoughtful and interesting, communicating a lot about both the images and the artists in just a few lines and they also fit the tone of the piece itself.
In their dual portrait, the ethereal figures of Dale and Gail sense that they possess the same fleeting delicacy as the frothy sea-foam that pools around their ankles. Like shifting sea spirits, they emerge from and belong to the foggy idyll of Pacifica…
What a poetic description for these emotionally moving images.
Even the description of the exhibit as whole felt urgent:
Through their meticulous explorations of place, these artists challenge views to reconsider their relationships with land, history, and community, fostering a heightened awareness of and appreciation for the intricate tapestry that sustains our global existence.
Ok, it’s not outstanding, but I UNDERSTAND IT, and it manages to say enough to make me think that the curators and the collection have a bigger purpose.