DAY AT THE DE YOUNG

The weekend is one of my favorite parts of the week. It’s the time where adventures can be had by yourself or with others. One adventure that a group can do together is go into the city. 

One thing that’s been made clear in the past couple of days is that it’s way too hot in Berkeley. With the heat being incredibly prevalent, it felt fitting to go into the city on Saturday to visit the de Young Museum, which is hosting the second triennial of the de Young Open, which showcases more than 800 art pieces created by Bay Area artists and carefully handpicked by a jury. 

What makes the exhibit magic to me is that it really hits home to the viewer that art can be done in many different styles. 

Due to the sheer amount of artwork present, the best way to organize it is to make a coherent exhibition. This can separate the artwork into rooms based on a broad criteria. For this exhibition, this basic separation tactic is to group artworks by genre. These groupings allow the viewers to talk about the art in each genre, from portraits to abstraction to nature, in a more digestible manner. 

What also helps the viewer be distracted from the great amount of content available is the high ceilings and the great lighting in the museum space. This setting creates a sense of awe for viewers as they can take their time to understand each artwork while making a lot of progress through the exhibit. These structural features are also an efficient way to produce a change in tone that allows for the exhibition to transition smoothly. 

Yet, what makes this exhibition another success for the de Young is the subtle details inserted by smart curation. As the viewers are slowing down through the large stage given to the artworks, what becomes more prominent is the subtle grouping of different interpretations of similar topics. This can be seen with the grouping of portraits of the passage of age and some meta artworks about consuming art in a museum. Each takes on another perspective that complements other artworks being shown, rather than overtaking them. For the passage of age portraits, this takes the form of each artwork playing with a different kind of scale. Then looking at the meta artworks about consuming art, the viewer can see each artist’s perspective through the use of transparent figures and big splashes of color to different degrees. With these only being a couple of examples, it’s clear that this exhibit – though being open call – was as thoughtfully curated as any other exhibition.

All of this continues the legacy of Bay Area artists and the rich history present here in the arts. The success of the first de Young Open in 2020 and the present success wouldn’t have been possible without the creativity of the artists who live here. This message is another takeaway from this exhibition besides the knowledge that good art can be found in every genre: the immense creativity of Bay Area artists is priceless. Altogether, by having nine counties of the Bay Area represented for the rest of the community, it shows that de Young knows that San Francisco is only one part of the Bay Area puzzle.

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