A Hundred Years with Auguste Rodin’s The Thinker — San Francisco’s Most Beautiful Museum Celebrates Its Centennial:
- Exhibitions on Pioneering Artists Yinka Shonibare, Wayne Thiebaud, Mary Cassatt, Berthe Morisot, and Édouard Manet Will Reframe Art History
- Multilingual Visitor Experience to Premiere with Support of Google.org
- New Generation of Curators Will Lead the Museum into the Next Century
SAN FRANCISCO, July 22, 2024 — A century after the Legion of Honor’s founding by the tour de force Alma de Bretteville Spreckels and her husband, Adolph B. Spreckels, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (“Fine Arts Museums”) look forward to celebrating the Legion of Honor 100, a once-in-a-generation series of festivities commemorating the 1924 founding of the beloved San Francisco institution. The Legion of Honor 100 will commence in November 2024 and continue for the next 12 months to highlight the unique histories, rich collections, and future aspirations of the Legion of Honor. Dedicated museum supporters and new audiences alike are invited to imagine the institution’s future, and how they might take part in it, through a series of exhibitions and public programs, as well as contribute to an ambitious gifts of art and endowment fundraising campaign.
“When the Legion of Honor opened its doors a century ago, the nascent art museum represented the ambitions and singular vision of an extraordinary civic-minded couple,” said Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. “Over the course of the past 100 years, as the Legion and its collection have grown in international renown, the museum has also come to embody the collective aspirations of generations of San Franciscans and Bay Area residents. The Legion of Honor centennial provides us the occasion to celebrate with the communities we serve and to reflect on the museum's role as a cornerstone of cultural life in San Francisco.”
As part of the Legion of Honor 100, the Fine Arts Museums announce a series of major exhibitions organized by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, which will complement the previously announced Mary Cassatt at Work. Visitors will be able to explore Wayne Thiebaud’ six-decade career, including his rarely viewed appropriations and works from his personal collection; the artistic exchange between the Impressionist painters Berthe Morisot and Édouard Manet; and to close out the centennial year contemporary artist Yinka Shonibare’s work in dialogue with the museum’s historical collection in the artist’s first major exhibition on the US West Coast. An exhibition tracing the history of the Legion of Honor will also be on view for the year.
New displays drawn from the permanent collection, featuring founding gifts from the French government and Alma de Bretteville Spreckels, are also planned for collection galleries dedicated to porcelain and works on paper. In addition, the Legion of Honor’s grand galleries dedicated to Baroque art will be revitalized and rehung with a fresh curatorial approach, including newly conserved artworks and refreshed interpretive material available in multiple languages.
Visitors will be invited to enjoy the museum and the permanent collection on view through a new multilingual audio tour. Part of an expanded interpretation program made possible with support from Google.org, the free audio tour will be available in Spanish, Mandarin, Cantonese, and English, reflecting some of the most widely spoken languages among San Francisco residents. New multilingual in-gallery narratives will provide additional context to new and returning visitors, framing the art on view in the complex societal context in which they were created.
A yearlong series of public programs and events will foster a sense of connection between visitors and the museum. These robust offerings will commence during the Centennial Weekend Celebration, November 7–11. On Saturday, November 9, the Free Saturdays event will feature vibrant live performances, creative family activations, musical experiences, the debut of new centennial-themed docent tours, and the launch of a new monthly curatorial lecture series, “A Closer Look.” On Veterans Day, Monday, November 11, the museum will be open from 9:30 am to 5:15 pm and offer free admission, a lecture on the history of the Legion of Honor, organ concerts of patriotic music, and special veterans-themed tours. Centennial Weekend Celebration performances and weekend-long complimentary admission are generously underwritten by Bank of America. More information about the Centennial Weekend Celebration.
Centering robust scholarship and curatorial expertise, the Fine Arts Museums also announce several recent curatorial appointments at the Legion of Honor. Emily A. Beeny was recently named Chief Curator of the Legion of Honor and Barbara A. Wolfe Curator in Charge of European Paintings, and Furio Rinaldi has been appointed Curator in Charge of the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts. Several new and recent appointments are also announced. Sally Katz, Assistant Curator of Photography joins other recent curatorial appointments, which include Isabella Lores-Chavez (Associate Curator of European Paintings), Jeffrey Fraiman (Assistant Curator of European Decorative Arts and Sculpture), and Natalia Lauricella (Assistant Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs). The Fine Arts Museums also celebrate the recent endowments of curatorial positions for both Emily A. Beeny (Barbara A. Wolfe Curator in Charge of European Paintings) and Renée Dreyfus (George and Judy Marcus Distinguished Curator in Charge of Ancient Art).
Newly Announced Legion of Honor 100 Exhibitions
Celebrating 100 Years at the Legion of Honor
November 9, 2024–November 2, 2025
The exhibition Celebrating 100 Years of the Legion of Honor looks back to the museum’s opening on Armistice Day in 1924 through to its 1990s expansion into the present day, and anticipates a new vision for the future of this quintessential San Francisco institution. The story of the Legion of Honor comes to life through key works from the collection, rediscovered photographs and materials from the museum’s archives, and an expansive timeline.
The exhibition will present early gifts of art made to the collection by civic-minded patrons. These collection highlights include Auguste Rodin’s Saint John the Baptist from the inimitable Alma de Bretteville Spreckels and an ancient ceramic vase gifted by her friend Elisabeth of Romania, the queen of Greece, and tapestries depicting the life of Joan of Arc gifted by the French Government at the museum’s founding. The timeline will take visitors through the decades, including a 1930 Diego Rivera exhibition, the 1972 merger with the de Young, the seismic upgrade and expansion after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, and recent exhibitions featuring interventions by contemporary artists such as Wangechi Mutu.
The exhibition is punctuated by a century’s worth of images of visitors interacting with Rodin’s famous The Thinker (1904). Front and center in the museum’s courtyard, the sculpture continues to welcome everyone to explore art and their own creativity.
Read More \ Image Gallery
Wayne Thiebaud: Art Comes from Art
March 22–August 17, 2025
"I believe very much in the tradition that art comes from art and nothing else” – Wayne Thiebaud
Wayne Thiebaud (1920–2021) was a self-described art “thief” who openly drew ideas from and reinterpreted old and new European and American artworks, believing that art history is a continuum that connects artists of the past, present, and future. Highlighting works from across the beloved artist’s six-decade career, this retrospective exhibition will feature Thiebaud’s extensive appropriations, virtuosic reinterpretations, and direct copies of famous artworks, as well as objects from his personal art collection.
Approximately 60 quintessential works by Thiebaud—including paintings of people (alone and together); still lifes of cakes, tabletops, and other ordinary objects; cityscapes with soaring buildings and vertiginous hills; and mountain landscapes—will offer an in-depth exploration of one of the most important and most overlooked aspects of his art practice: his passionate engagement with art history.
The exhibition also will include a salon-style gallery featuring about 40 of Thiebaud’s copies after other artists’ work spanning from Rembrandt van Rijn to Édouard Manet to Pablo Picasso; as well as approximately 50 original artworks by other artists such as Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, Willem de Kooning, Giorgio Morandi, Richard Diebenkorn, and more, which Thiebaud acquired for his personal collection.
Read More / Image Gallery
Radiant Impressions: Chiaroscuro to Screenprint
Spring 2025
Color has challenged and fascinated printmakers since the Renaissance. This exhibition explores technological and artistic revolutions in color print from the 16th century through today, highlighting innovative 18th-century mezzotints and vibrant lithographs from the late 19th century, as well as more recent practices by leading contemporary artists such as Chris Ofili (b.1968) and Tauba Auerbach (b.1981), who continue to explore color in printmaking processes. These radiant impressions on paper across time and technique reveal the enduring pull of color in print.
Image Gallery
A Gift from France: Biscuit de Sèvres Porcelain
Spring 2025
A century ago, the French government supported the newly built Legion of Honor through many gifts of art, including pieces produced by the Sèvres porcelain factory. A selection of these, including busts of historical figures like George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, military figurines, and an eye-catching monumental vase, will be presented in the Bowles Porcelain Gallery in celebration of the Legion of Honor 100. The presentation of these objects carried on a French tradition of offering biscuit (unglazed porcelain) sculptures as diplomatic gifts, commemorating the long friendship between France and the United States and drawing a line between French military and intellectual support for the American Revolution and American support for France during the First World War.
Yinka Shonibare
November 15, 2025 - July 26, 2026
The Legion of Honor will present the first major exhibition on the US West Coast dedicated to the artist Yinka Shonibare’s work, including sculptures, tapestries, and films from the past 25 years to the present day.
Throughout his career, Shonibare (b. 1960, London) has engaged in post-colonial discussions of identity and authenticity, frequently using references to historical events and renowned Western art and literature to do so. Beginning in the museum’s Court of Honor, Shonibare’s work will be presented within and throughout the Legion of Honor’s European art collection and Neoclassical architecture. The dialogues created will allow visitors to confront both the historical themes of his work, including the British Empire’s entanglement with the international slave trade, and more immediate contemporary issues of social injustice, such as migration, homelessness and climate change.
This exhibition is part of the Fine Arts Museums’ Contemporary Art Program, which presents the work of living artists in dialogue with the Legion of Honor and de Young’s unique buildings, location in the Bay Area, and permanent collection.
Additional Legion of Honor 100 Exhibitions
Mary Cassatt at Work
October 5, 2024–January 26, 2025
Too often dismissed as a sentimental painter of mothers and children, Cassatt was in fact a modernist pioneer. Her paintings, pastels, and prints boldly call attention to the processes of their own making: the marks of Cassatt’s brush, etching needle, pastel stick, and even fingertips. Along with scenes of women at the opera, visiting friends, or taking tea, Cassatt often depicted so-called “women’s work”—knitting and needlepoint, bathing children, and nursing infants. These images invite comparisons between the work of art making and the work of caregiving, smuggling in experimentation under the cover of acceptably “feminine” subject matter. The exhibition is the first major US presentation of Cassatt’s work in over 25 years and is organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art in collaboration with the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. The Legion of Honor is the sole West Coast venue.
Press Release \ Image Gallery
Dress Rehearsal: The Art of Theatrical Design
November 9, 2024–April 27, 2025
In celebration of the Legion of Honor’s 100th anniversary, Dress Rehearsal brings together a selection of outstanding costume and set designs through two intertwined stories—the history of theater and dance, and the founding of the museum. The exhibition includes rarely shown drawings and designs given to the Legion of Honor by its cofounder Alma de Bretteville Spreckels, as well as works by celebrated artists from Ballets Russes designer Léon Bakst, to avant-garde painters Natalia Goncharova, Pablo Picasso, and Marie Laurencin, to contemporary artist Marcel Dzama.
Upcoming Exhibitions at the de Young
About Place: Bay Area Artists from the Svane Gift
August 10–September 30, 2025
This exhibition is the second in a series drawn from the significant 2022 Svane Family Foundation gift of 42 works by more than 30 living Bay Area artists. The installation explores how artists relate to their environments through place as physical land, heritage, the imaginary, and belonging. Following the initial Svane exhibition Crafting Radicality, About Place examines climate change and its local impact. Some featured artists use found materials not only to address ecological issues but also to add layers of meaning, while others play with figure and ground.
Press Release \ Image Gallery
Tamara de Lempicka
October 12, 2024–February 9, 2025
A major figure of the Art Deco movement, Lempicka is today recognized as one of the preeminent portrait painters of her time, combining the classical figural style of the European pictorial tradition with the modern energy of the international avant-gardes. Through her own liberal lifestyle and bold pictorial technique, Lempicka captured the confidence, glamor, and effervescence of interwar Paris as well as the cool cosmopolitan sheen of Hollywood celebrity. The first major museum retrospective of Lempicka in the US, Tamara de Lempicka explores the artist’s seductive style and fearless way of life with approximately 100 works, including the paintings that first brought Lempicka fame, and the drawings revealing a deliberate design process
Press Release \ Image Gallery
Art and War in the Renaissance: The Battle of Pavia Tapestries
October 19, 2024–January 12, 2025
This exhibition marks the first time this landmark cycle of seven large-scale tapestries, on loan from the Capodimonte Museum in Naples, Italy, has been on view in the US. The enormous images, each about 27 by 14 feet, commemorate Holy Roman Emperor Charles V’s victory in 1525 over the French king Francis I during the 16th-century Italian Wars. The tapestries were groundbreaking creative achievements that incorporated the latest cutting-edge artistic advances. The tapestries will draw contemporary viewers into the world of Renaissance history, military technology, and fashion and will be presented alongside impressive examples of 16th-century arms and armor.
Embroidered Histories
December 14, 2024–December 7, 2025
Featuring favorite stitches and motifs, embroidery samplers have been used to teach needlework skills and literacy since the 14th century. By the 18th century, these textiles were viewed as works of art in their own right. This exhibition highlights European embroidery samplers from the 17th through 19th centuries in our collection. Through a close look at the samplers’ materials, techniques, and designs, Embroidered Histories explores economic, political, and social developments in Europe during these centuries.
About the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, comprising the de Young in Golden Gate Park and the Legion of Honor in Lincoln Park, are the largest public arts institutions in San Francisco.
The Legion of Honor was modeled after the neoclassical Palais de la Légion d’Honneur in Paris. The museum, designed by George Applegarth, opened in 1924 on a bluff in Lincoln Park overlooking the Golden Gate. It offers unique insight into the art historical, political, and social movements of the previous 4,000 years of human history, with holdings including ancient art from the Mediterranean basin; European painting, sculpture, and decorative arts; and the largest collection of works on paper in the American West. In 2024-25, the museum will celebrate its 100th anniversary with a series of exhibitions, programming, and new visitor resources.
The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco are located on land unceded by the Ramaytush Ohlone, who are the original inhabitants of what is now the San Francisco Peninsula. The greater Bay Area is also the ancestral territory of other Ohlone peoples, as well as the Miwok, Yokuts, and Patwin. We acknowledge, recognize, and honor the Indigenous ancestors, elders, and descendants whose nations and communities have lived in the Bay Area over many generations and continue to do so today. We respect the enduring relationships that exist between Indigenous peoples and their homelands. We are committed to partnering with Indigenous communities to raise awareness of their legacy and engage with the history of the region, the impacts of genocide, and the dynamics of settler colonialism that persist today.
Media Contact
Press Office / press@famsf.org