Bill White was like a kid in a candy shop, a shop where every gumdrop is priceless.
As exhibition designer for the George and Dorothy Saxe gallery at San Francisco’s de Young Museum, White faced a tough assignment: to sort through the Saxes’ collection of contemporary crafts and arrange them for display.
Carefully uncrating exquisite works of colored glass, wood, cloth and plaster by artists like Dale Chihuly and Beatrice Wood, White reflected on the quiet world of beauty that surrounded him in the gallery space.
“The hard part is working them all in together,” said White, who knows how much this art means to the couple. “I’m totally blown away by the collection. I’ve been to their home. This [exhibit] feels like their home.”
The newly rebuilt de Young should feel like a second home for the Saxes. The Menlo Park couple has been among the museum’s most ardent champions, with George Saxe a member of the board of trustees for more than five years.
When it reopens on Saturday, Oct. 15, the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park will again be home to some of the country’s most significant collections of art from the Americas, the Pacific and Africa.
Several prominent members of the local Jewish community helped make it happen, among them Bernard and Barbro Osher, Al Baum and the Saxes.
“I was always very enthusiastic but nowhere near to what I am now,” said George Saxe of the $202 million facility. “Our goal from the beginning was to put together an important collection of contemporary crafts. We also had as a goal to put the pieces in a museum, preferably in San Francisco. We’re both just thrilled.”
Added Dorothy Saxe, “We wanted to live with these beautiful objects, but early on we also wanted to share them.”
Built on the same site it has inhabited for 110 years, the new de Young features more than 116,000 square feet of gallery, display and educational space. Thanks to the sweeping interior design by Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, it feels like it goes on forever.
Topping the exterior of 7,200 dimpled copper panels is a 144-foot observation tower that rises above the surrounding cypresses like an Aztec pyramid. The connection is apt, as the de Young also houses a spectacular collection of Mesoamerican art, Mayan stone engravings and Teotihuacán murals.
The old and the new jostle harmoniously throughout the de Young. In addition to pieces by Winslow Homer, Jasper Johns, Thomas Hart Benton, Georgia O’Keefe and Diego Rivera, the museum also contains important works by Jewish artists such as Adi Ness, photographers Diane Arbus and Richard Avedon, painters Jack Levine, Ben Shahn and Mark Rothko, and sculptor Louise Nevelson.
Nevelson’s welded aluminum-and-steel piece titled “Ocean Gate” is one of the featured works in the new Barbro Osher Sculpture Garden. The 35,000-square-foot garden boasts 15 pieces by leading sculptors like Henry Moore and Claes Oldenberg (the latter contributes a gigantic safety pin).
Said Bernard Osher of San Francisco: “We’ve been members of the museum for the past 25 years. In 1988 we gave money for the sculpture garden, then in 1989 there was the earthquake. Finally when they tore the building down, they had the funds to start the project. It’s a smashing garden.”
Like much of the museum, a walk around the Osher Sculpture Garden won’t cost a penny. The ground floor exhibits, café, bookstore and educational facilities are all free. Admission to the upstairs collections ranges from $6 to $10.
Al Baum has enjoyed a close-up view of the museum’s long road to rebirth. As a member of the museum’s executive committee, he was in on every key decision to remake the de Young.
It all started in 1894 when San Francisco Chronicle co-founder Michael H. de Young commissioned the building as part of an international expo. Designed in a neo-Egyptian style, the structure was later converted into a permanent art museum. In 1989, however, the Loma Prieta earthquake dealt it a near deathblow.
By the mid-1990s, it was clear a new structure would be needed. A bond measure to raise the necessary funds was put before voters, but it fell just shy of the two-thirds majority.
“The leadership decided to hell with it,” recalled Baum. “We figured we could [raise the money] privately. It was quite a goal but we did it.”
The Saxes donated time, money and art to the effort. They are especially pleased that their passion for glass and other crafts has finally caught on in the museum world.
“When we first started,” said George Saxe, “fine arts museums had no interest in this kind of material. The Met [in New York] was interested in the collection, but they wanted us to know that when that show was over, the art would go in the basement.”
That’s not the case here. “The de Young has put in writing that they are going to be one of the leaders in the country in showing this kind of material,” added Saxe. “They are not changing their minds.”
Devoted as they are to the arts, the Saxes are also strong supporters of the Jewish community. George Saxe has been a S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation board member and served on the boards of Jewish Home and Rhoda Goldman Plaza. He has also been president of Congregation Beth Am in Los Altos Hills. Dorothy Saxe has served as a trustee with the Jewish Museum in San Francisco, AIPAC and Jewish Family and Children’s Services.
“As passionate as we are about collecting,” said Dorothy Saxe, “our number one area of interest of support is Jewish causes.”
One of the Bay Area’s most visible of Jewish philanthropists, Osher also considers giving a sacred obligation. “I was brought up in a family that always did charitable things,” he said. “You can’t have a society without some sort of culture. It comes down to individuals like ourselves to fund these things for the general public.”
Baum, too, has made his Jewish activism a priority. He has served on the S.F.-based JCF board and was especially active in LGBT issues. But he is on a contact high these days with the de Young.
“It’s splendid,” he said. “The interior is large, spacious and filled with light.”
As for the exterior, it will gradually turn from a burnished copper color to green over time, a cool trick of chemistry that will only add to the de Young’s status as a Bay Area icon.