Legion of Honor

Listen for a moment. Before any history, there is the wind. It comes in off the Pacific, cool and salted, and it moves through the cypress trees on this headland with a low, steady hush. Somewhere below, a foghorn may be sounding near the Golden Gate. Underfoot, the paving of the forecourt is pale and hard. Ahead of you rises a white building with tall columns and a triumphal arch. It looks as if it belongs in Paris. It does, in a way.

This is the Legion of Honor, one of the two museums that make up the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Its partner is the de Young, across the city in Golden Gate Park. The Legion sits in Lincoln Park, on high ground at the northwest edge of San Francisco. Few art museums in the world have a setting like this one. On a clear day, the bridge, the ocean and the hills of Marin all sit within a short walk of the front steps.

The building is a three-quarter scale version of a real Parisian landmark. In Paris, the Palais de la Légion d'Honneur stands on the left bank of the Seine. It houses the French order of merit founded by Napoleon. The San Francisco version borrows its form — the arched gateway, the colonnaded courtyard, the classical facade. So the name is not a random flourish. It points directly back to that building in France.

The woman behind this museum was Alma de Bretteville Spreckels. She grew up in San Francisco with little money and married Adolph Spreckels, heir to a large sugar fortune. Alma loved France and French art. She had seen the French pavilion at the city's great world's fair in 1915, which also copied the Paris palace. That temporary pavilion gave her the idea for a permanent one. Adolph shared the project, and together they gave the museum to the city.

Here is something many visitors miss. This is not only an art museum. It is also a war memorial. The Spreckels dedicated the building to the Californians who died in the First World War. It opened in the mid-1920s, only a few years after that war ended. So as you walk through the arch, you are entering a monument to grief as well as a home for paintings and sculpture. The classical calm of the architecture carries that quiet purpose.

Now turn your attention to the courtyard, the Court of Honor. In its centre, a bronze figure sits on a rock, chin resting on his hand. This is The Thinker, by the French sculptor Auguste Rodin. Rodin first imagined him as the poet Dante, gazing down on the gates of hell. Over time the figure became a symbol of human thought itself. Many casts exist around the world. This one is among the most photographed, framed by the columns and the open sky.

Rodin is central to this museum's story. Alma Spreckels became one of the most important early collectors of his work in America. Her connection to the sculptor came partly through Loie Fuller, an American dancer who was famous in Paris. Fuller moved in Rodin's circle and encouraged Alma to buy. As a result, the Legion holds a large collection of Rodin's sculpture. Inside, you can see bronzes and marbles side by side, and compare how he worked in each material.

The galleries themselves cover a long span of European art. You will find painting, sculpture and decorative arts from the medieval period through the early twentieth century. There are period rooms, tapestries, and fine furniture. The museum also holds an ancient collection. A large part of its strength is on paper. The Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts is housed here, with a deep collection of prints and drawings. Only a small portion can be shown at once, because light damages paper.

As you move through the building, look up. In the 1990s the museum closed for a major renovation and seismic strengthening. San Francisco had been shaken by a serious earthquake in 1989, and old buildings across the city needed work. During that project, the museum expanded underground. A glass pyramid skylight now brings daylight down into the lower galleries. It is a quiet nod to another Paris museum, the Louvre, with its own famous glass pyramid.

That underground work brought a second surprise. Long before it was a park, this land was a cemetery. In the nineteenth century, the city buried many of its poorer residents and immigrants here. Most graves were later moved, but not all of them. When the builders dug down in the 1990s, they found human remains beneath the museum. So the ground under this temple of art holds an older, sadder layer of San Francisco's past.

The building also holds a sound that many visitors never expect. The museum contains a large pipe organ. Its pipes are hidden inside the walls, so you may not notice the instrument at all. When it plays, the music seems to come from the building itself. Recitals take place here from time to time. If you hear deep notes rolling through the halls, that is the sound of the organ, not a recording.

Before you leave, walk to the edge of the grounds. Near the parking area, a short path leads to the Holocaust Memorial by the American artist George Segal. White figures lie on the ground behind a barbed-wire fence, with a single standing survivor. It is a hard and powerful work. Beyond the museum, trails run down toward Lands End, along the cliffs above the ocean. Golfers cross the green lawns of the park around you.

Take one more look at the facade as you step back into the wind. The white stone, the columns, the arch — a piece of Paris, rebuilt on a Pacific cliff by a woman who loved France. Notice the cypress trees bent by years of ocean weather. Listen again for the foghorn, or the gulls. The Thinker is still sitting in his courtyard behind you... and the view toward the Golden Gate is waiting at the end of the path.