Fun at the de Young

Every first Tuesday of the month, museums around the city are free, so a few weeks ago I decided to take advantage of the bargain deal and check out the de Young art museum in Golden Gate Park. 

Here is the museum from the outside. It looks like a large charcoal block. In fact, it reminded me of that big cube thing on the Transformers movies. (After seeing the last Transformers movie, I felt mentally ravaged and intellectually depleted, so I was also trying to remedy that by going to the museum.) Anyway, I tried NOT to think about Transformers as I went inside:

Inside, they have a variety of collections,

Furniture and folk art:

African and Oceanic tribal art and artifacts (tons of masks and shrunken heads and fertility gods and things).

American Painting, here are some of my favorites: 

The canvas looked like it was actually glowing:

The painting above is by one of my very favorite artists, Edward Hopper. (Not to be confused with Dennis Hopper, actor and evil mastermind of Speed and Waterworld fame. Here Dennis is with his portrait made of broken dishes--unfortunately, not a piece in the de Young collection.)

The Cellist. All grey tones, neat geometric shapes:

There were plenty of modern pieces, too. This is a bunch of charred wood hung from the ceiling with fishing wire and a bunch of mirror blobs on a mirror table. They looked cool, as modern usually tries to.

And finally, my favorite piece in the whole place. It is called "High and Wide"

My favorite thing about it is not how it looks, though it is admittedly lovely; the best part of this piece was the description of the medium: Goat hides, carpet, found metal, clothing, Mickey Mouse backpack, barbed wire, upholstery, textbook cover, Splash Zone compound, enamel, and spray paint on canvas and wood. 

(i.e., the contents of the dumpster behind Wal-Mart. It reminded me of Transformers in that way...)