De Young Museum

The M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, commonly referred to as the de Young, is a fine arts museum located in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, and one of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco along with the Legion of Honor. The de Young is named for early San Francisco newspaperman M. H. de Young. Since Nov 1, 2018, Thomas P. Campbell serves as the Director and CEO of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, overseeing the de Young and Legion of Honor museums.

The museum opened in 1895 as an outgrowth of the California Midwinter International Exposition of 1894 . It was housed in an Egyptian revival structure which had been the Fine Arts Building at the fair. The building was badly damaged in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and was closed for a year and a half for repairs. Before long, the museum's steady development called for a new space to better serve its growing audiences. Michael de Young responded by planning the building that would serve as the core of the de Young facility through the 20th century. Louis Christian Mullgardt, the coordinator for architecture for the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition, designed the Spanish-Plateresque-style building. The new structure was completed in 1919 and formally transferred by de Young to the city's park commissioners. In 1921, de Young added a central section, together with a tower that would become the museum's signature feature, and the museum began to assume the basic configuration that it retained until 2001. Michael de Young's great efforts were honored with the changing of the museum's name to the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum. Another addition, a west wing, was completed in 1925, the year de Young died. In 1929 the original Egyptian-style building was declared unsafe and demolished.

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