de Young Exhibition Records

The de Young museum opened on March 23, 1895 in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, California.

The original museum building was built as the Fine Arts Building for the 1894 California Midwinter International Exposition (CMIE). It was built in an Egyptian-Revival style decoratively adorned with images of Hathor, the cow goddess. While the rest of the structures from the fair were demolished, the Fine Arts Building remained and was opened on March 23, 1985 as the Memorial Museum.

Cofounder of the San Francisco Chronicle, Michael H. de Young, was chair of the organizing committee of the fair and worked with the city and park commission to erect the Memoral Museum at the close of the fair. The original collection of the de Young was built from artifacts bought during CMIE, M.H. de Young's personal collection of historical artifacts, as well as that of the museum’s first curator of natural science, ethnographer and cultural historian Charles P. Wilcomb. The de Young was thus led by curators, rather than directors for the first 40 years of its history.

Early in its history, the de Young museum did not curate many special exhibitions and rather focused on exhibiting its growing permanent collection. The museum was distinct for having each of its galleries dedicated to objects on a specific topic or culture. Notable rooms were The Pioneer Room, which exhibited artifacts about the earliest eastern settlers of California during the Gold Rush era, as well as the Metal Room, Ceramics Room, Egyptian Room, and so on. The earliest known special exhibition was a showing of The William Keith Collection of Paintings, lent to the museum from August 13 through October 5, 1912.

On April 17, 1915, the de Young held the First Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture by California Artists, put on in conjunction with the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition. This juried exhibition invited contemporary California artists to show at the de Young and led to an annual opportunity for artists to exhibit and sell their works in the museum.

In the wake of the April 18, 1906 earthquake, the museum was badly damaged and closed for a year and a half for repairs, reopening in November 1907. It was then decided to be expanded in 1916, with construction beginning on April 15, 1917. The expansion was designed by Louis Christian Mullgardt, the architect of the Panama Pacific International Exposition in 1915 which had contributed to a rise in attendance at the de Young. The design was in a Spanish Planteresque style that included ornate concrete ornaments around the facade of the building. When the Museum fully reopened on January 20, 1921, the park commission decided to rename it the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum to honor the man who opened and supported the museum.

Four years after M.H. de Young died on February 15, 1925, the park commission and the museum's board voted to expand the the museum again as well as demolish the original Fine Arts Building, which was deteriorating. The de Young reopened on July 15, 1931. Also in 1931, the museum's first proper director, Lloyd LaPage Rollins, was appointed to lead both the de Young and neighboring Legion of Honor. This was the first time the museums were informally united. He resigned in 1933, being replaced by Dr. Walter Heil. Heil led boths museums until 1939, then resigning from his post at the Legion of Honor. He stayed on at the de Young until retiring in 1961.

In November 1932, the museum presented the first ever exhibition of the famed Group f.64, which featured work by eleven photographers including Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, Sonya Noskowiak, and Edward Weston. This photographic exhibition and several like it throughout the 1930s was supported by the museum's first director Lloyd LaPage Rollins, whose personal interest in photography as a fine art medium contributed to the rise of photography as an artistic discipline.

By 1940, the ornate decorations on the facade of the building were falling off and were deemed a public hazard. It was not until 1949 that the ornaments were finally removed and the facade remodeled by architects Arthur Brown, Jr. and Frederick H. Meyer. The museum remained in this state for the next fifty years.

In 1959, the the Avery Brundage Collection of Asian Art was gifted to the city, and in 1965 another construction project replaced the west wing of the de Young with a larger annex, designed by Gardner Dailey, to house this important collection. The Center for Asian Art and Culture opened in 1966 within the de Young museum building. It was renamed the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco in 1973 when it was declared to be a separate institution from the de Young. In 1994, a plan to move the Asian Art Museum into the original building of the main branch of the San Francisco Public Library began and the Asian Art Museum opened its Civic Center location in 2003.

After Heil retired in 1961, his successor Jack R. McGregor was named in 1963. He led the de Young until his own retirement in 1969. At that time, director of the Legion of Honor since 1968, Ian McKibbin White, was named acting director. Then in 1970, White was named director of both museums and he led the merger of the museums in 1972 into the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (FAMSF). Through this merger, White reorganized the collections, establishing curatorial departments for paintings, sculpture and decorative arts, prints and drawings, and the arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. The de Young moved its collections of French paintings to the Legion and focused the de Young on American art, international textile arts and costumes, and art of the Americas, Oceania, and Africa.

In 1987, Ian McKibbing White retired and was replaced with Harry S. Parker III. Two years later, the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake damaged the museum's structure and it was determined that it needed to be completely rebuilt. After a successful campaign to privately raise the funds to rebuild the museum, the de Young Museum closed its doors for a 5-year reconstruction on December 31, 2000. On October 15, 2005, the de Young reopened in a brand new building designed by Swiss architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron. Parker subsequently retired after the completion of the project in December 2005.

In September 2017, after a long history of promoting contemporary art, the Museums established the Contemporary Art and Programming department.

In the spring of 2020, the de Young celebrated its 125th anniversary.

On March 14, 2020, the Fine Arts Museums closed due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 Pandemic. Over the course of the next two years, the staff of the Museums worked tirelessly to keep the Museums going with virtual events and programs. In 2021, the de Young reopened to the public while continuing to fight the rage of the pandemic.