Stable at Cuenca,
John Singer Sargent
It’s been a busy year for history buffs in the Bay
Area. 2015 marks the 100th Anniversary
of San Francisco’s Panama-Pacific
International Exposition (PPIE).
There is the ongoing exhibit at the Palace of Fine Arts. City Rising at the California Historical Society
is not to be missed. Pacific Worlds at the Oakland Museum of California
connects the Bay Area to Pacific Island Nations and highlights their role in
the PPIE. The San Francisco History Expo this year at
the old Mint on 5th Street was heavily focused on the PPIE (and was
great). Now it’s the de Young’s turn.
Last night I visited the de Young for the member’s preview
of Jewel City: Art from San
Francisco’s Panama-Pacific International Exposition. The de Young has installed a collection of
art that was originally displayed in San Francisco in 1915. It’s been an amazing effort to bring back art
from all over the world for this exhibit.
It is an opportunity to see work in person that would require you to do a
lot of travelling otherwise. Some of it
is still in the hands of private collectors.
There are a number of important pieces on loan from the Musée d’Orsay but paintings
are borrowed from all over, museums like Rochester, Portland and Buffalo just
to name a few. And there is work that
has ended up in the Smithsonian like the John Singer Sargent shown above.
As much as I thought I knew about of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, I
did not realize just how much art was originally shown. In 1915 there were over 11,000 pieces
including paintings, prints, sculpture and photography. And of course things never change –
California artists had to fight to get their work shown unless they had been validated
by the New Yorkeratti – even back in 1915.
This show is up until January 17, 2016 and it’s the sort of
show that I will need to return to many times.
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