13 Comments

  1. The extra story (in the reflecting pool) improves it immensely.
    I am still waiting to visit the drive-through underground museum under the concourse, built at the same time as the copper-clad parking garage they built on the surface.

  2. Beautiful picture. Hideous building by day. Not a good museum, either. Miss the old De Young, thank god we still have the Legion of Honor.

  3. the deyoung museum is one of the too few examples of great modern architecture in san francisco. in that field, public architecture that is, (as well as street trees) sf is lacking sorely!
    what a phantastic building! anyone who thinks it’s ugly and serves as a poor substitute for the old building needs some serious eduction in art and culture.
    but it seems many san franciscans prefer faked victorians, like the real hideous building on the corner mission@valencia; the new old fashioned street lights on octavia, etc….

  4. It infuriates me when I’m told a work of art is “phantastic” and it’s only because I’m an uneducated slob that I don’t appreciate it. Great art doesn’t require a course in art history — it inspires us from the depth of our being.

    In contrast, the de Young is a poke in the eye. Whether I’m walking in the park or catch sight of it from Cabrillo, the sheer ugliness of it astonishes and depresses me. It is the perversity of an artistic community and a municipal elite that forces this atrocity down our throats and then tells us “oh, you’re such philistines, can’t you see how glorious this is?”

    Next time, put the damn thing in some hipster neighborhood of the Mission where the cognoscenti have convinced themselves they somehow represent an improvement in the neighborhood when they’re just gentrifying asses with a paint brush that have made the City unaffordable not to mention unpalatable to the working class.

  5. oh yeah, let the masses determine the discourse of culture or even the course of culture…
    well, it might be possible and indeed it was possible, as long you have a well educated and enlightened population.
    rows of wannabe little versaille/tuscany mansion/family homes, that’s a poke in the eye! calling the deyoung ugly shows your ignorance, narrowmindness and uneducated mind. and we are not talking about university education here…

  6. It is a funky building. My husband thinks it looks like a wonky, inverted rendition of Tikal. As to exhibits, they vary at the DeYoung, just as they do at any museum. I do wish I had made it to the Olmec last year.

  7. I love this building. Rising above the fog and trees in the early mornings I always think that it looks like an abstract version of a Mayan temple…I guess I’m given to flights of fancy while running.
    Whatever, haters gonna hate, and not everyone likes the same sort of architecture. I’m a 32 year old female, if that matters.

  8. Nancy, my husband thinks the same about the Mayan temple. He even has to circle the block to make sure I see his “Tikal.” :o)

  9. That is one ugly building! I have a formal education (from London), and have traveled and lived in many places – I consider my self somewhat educated in more ways than one.

    Just because it is ‘different’ and ‘non classical’ doesn’t make it good. The Pompidou center in Paris uses function to define the structure. Various Frank Lloyd Wright buildings blend natural shapes and colors with nature. The structure in the Golden Gate Park, to me, is intentionally devoid of any natural appeal and appears to have been designed to shock and hurt the senses. Thank God I don’t have to see it often. What an embarrassment to the city.

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