de Young Museum

Sunlight filters down through the trees as you walk toward it. Then the building appears, long and low, wrapped in copper the warm color of the earth. Its surface is dimpled and pierced with thousands of small holes, catching the light in tiny points. The metal seems almost soft, almost alive. This is the de Young Museum, a home for art set deep within the green of Golden Gate Park.

A museum has stood on this spot for well over a century. The first one grew out of a great fair held here in the park in 1894. When the fair ended, people wanted a place to keep the art and objects it had gathered. The museum opened its doors the very next year, in 1895. It took the name of M. H. de Young, a local newspaper publisher who had helped bring the fair to life.

The museum you see today, though, is quite new. A powerful earthquake in 1989 shook the old stone building and left it cracked and weak. Engineers found it could not be made safe again. So the city made the bold choice to take it down and build anew. Two well-known architects from Switzerland designed the replacement, and the new museum opened to the public in 2005.

The copper skin is the building's most talked-about feature by far. When it was brand new, the metal shone bright and warm, almost orange in the sun. Over the years, copper reacts slowly with the moist air and turns a soft green. The architects planned for exactly this. They wanted the building to age gently and to blend, in time, into the green park all around it.

Step close and look carefully at the copper panels. The whole surface is covered in small raised bumps and round holes. This pattern was inspired by the way sunlight looks when it passes through a canopy of leaves. As the sun moves across the sky, the textured metal shifts and shimmers with light. The heavy building seems, somehow, to breathe along with the trees that surround it.

Inside, the museum's collections reach across the whole world. There is American art, gathered patiently over more than a hundred years. There are powerful works from Africa, from the islands of the Pacific, and from the early peoples of the Americas. Other quiet rooms are filled with fine textiles and costumes. Each gallery opens gently onto the next, in a slow and easy flow that invites you to wander.

The American collection is a particular strength of this museum. Paintings, furniture, and worked silver together trace the life of the country across many generations. You can follow how tastes and styles slowly changed, from plain and simple early pieces to bold and modern ones. Faces from long ago look steadily out at you from inside their gilded frames, calm and watchful.

Do not pass too quickly through the rooms of art from Africa and the Pacific. Carved masks, figures, and sacred objects line the walls and fill the cases. Many of these were made for ceremony and belief, not simply for display. They carry deep meaning that reaches far beyond their beauty alone. Stand close to one, and you can feel the care worked into every single cut.

A tall tower rises from one end of the building. It twists gently as it climbs, slowly turning to face the wider city beyond the park. At the very top waits an open room walled entirely in glass. Best of all, it costs nothing at all to enter this part of the museum. A smooth elevator carries you up through the heart of the tower in moments.

From the windows at the top of the tower, the view spreads out wide in every direction. The great green park rolls away just below you. Beyond it stand rows of pale houses, the rising hills, and on clear days the far line of the sea. Fog often drifts slowly across the scene, softening the distant edges. From this height, the whole restless city looks strangely calm and still.

The museum sits within a much larger world of gardens and winding paths. Just outside its doors, you can walk among trees and plants gathered from many different lands. A grand music concourse, lined with old, carefully trimmed trees, lies a short stroll away. Here, art and living nature meet and mingle freely, without any hard or clear line drawn between the two.

Step back outside again when you are finished within. The copper walls glow with a soft warm light in the late afternoon. Children run and tumble across the open grass nearby. The building will keep changing, slowly, year after year, as the metal deepens steadily toward green. Like the wide park that holds it, the de Young is never truly finished. It grows, very slowly, along with time itself.