Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco: de Young Museum

Originally constructed in 1894 as the Fine Arts Building, the first building to house the museum was designated a museum after the California Midwinter International Exposition for which it was built. The museum is named after Michael H. de Young, the chair of the exposition organizing committee and co-founder of the San Francisco Chronicle.

After sustaining significant damage from the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989, the de Young was redesigned in the late '90s. The new building, designed by the Swiss architectural firm Herzog & de Meuron, was opened in 2005.

For all comments and questions about the Guide, please e-mail us:

mlaguide@nccjapan.net

Collection size: as of February 2014

• 4,130 Japanese items, including:
• 3,300 prints
• 110 drawings
• 100 photographs
• 1,000 Chinese items, including:
• 640 prints
• 60 drawings
• 60 ceramics
• Total collection size: over 27,000 items.

URL: http://deyoung.famsf.org/

A digital collection over approximately 118,000 items from the combined collections of the de Young and Legion of Honor museums. These items are searchable, with results filterable by image availability, location, artist, format, collection, century of creation, and country of origin. The collections are also browsable by format, century of creation, country of origin, and collection.

Begun in 2012 for the de Young Museum, the Google Art Project Street View is an interactive facet of the Google Street View that allows users to walk through the de Young Museum and view over 200 works of art online. These also include approximately 60 works scanned at high resolution, gigapixel levels for in-depth zooming capabilities. More works are added on a rolling basis.

A collection of videos and other multimedia materials that further explore some of the works in the de Young museum, including Konishi Hirosada's Portrait of the Actor Mimasu Daigoro IV.

Directions

The de Young Museum website does not offer a museum map. However, Google Maps does have a basic layout available if zoomed in closely.

View Larger Map

Information on the cost for general admission can be found on the Hours & Admission page. This page also lists all exceptions to paid admission. Tickets can be purchased online here.

The de Young Museum offers imaging services for a variety of purposes, including press releases, personal use, and commercial or scholarly publications. For publications, they ask that any researchers read the conditions for print and electronic publication, which make up their licensing agreement. They do charge fees to offset the cost of the service, which are estimated when a licensing request is submitted. For more information, please visit the Photo Services & Imaging page.