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RECORD Recommends: Museums and Galleries
San Francisco has no shortage of internationally renowned museums and art galleries. From antiquities to contemporary art, exhibitions around the city offer a huge range of work—frequently in equally impressive buildings.
Almost every panel member recommended visiting the de Young Museum and the California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park. And praise for SFMOMA was also nearly unanimous—not only for its collection as well as its exhibitions of Modern and contemporary art, but also for its showpiece facility by Mario Botta. Construction on a new outdoor rooftop garden gallery is expected to finish in May.
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Though less accessible than the de Young or SFMOMA, the California Palace of the Legion of Honor in Lincoln Park, which like the de Young is overseen by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, comes recommended by Mark Harbick, who commends its “very successful restoration and retrofit in the 1990s.” He says the building, restored by architects Edward Larrabee Barnes and Mark Cavagnero, and predominantly European art collection is “almost worth the long trek” to the museum’s site on a bluff overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge.
For a concentrated dose of the San Francisco Gallery scene, John King points visitors to a building at 49 Geary Street. King describes 49 Geary as “eight floors of art galleries, with the occasional antiquarian bookseller thrown in for a change of pace,” adding, “Even the stairway between the floors has class.”
Once inside 49 Geary, Marsha Maytum frequents the Fraenkel Gallery, which specializes in 19th- and 20th-century photography as well as photo-influenced work in other media. Owen Kennerly recommends the Robert Koch Gallery, which routinely presents excellent exhibitions of contemporary photography.
Other commercial galleries recommended by our panel include the Hosfelt Gallery, which has a contemporary painting exhibition running through May 2nd; the Andrea Schwartz Gallery, which features contemporary work; and the John Berggruen Gallery on Grant Avenue, which focuses on 20th-century American and European paintings, drawings, and sculpture.
Our panel’s favorite museums also include the Asian Art Museum, which inhabits an old city library renovated by Gae Aulenti, the Contemporary Jewish Museum by Daniel Liebeskind, and the Cable Car Museum, located in the historic Washington/Mason cable car barn and powerhouse.
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