Asian Art Museum of San Francisco 1

It’s funny that I have travelled around the world but rarely explored San Francisco (SF). She is one of the few American cities that one can get around without a car, although she still got a long way to go, especially compared to other major cities in the world. In the past I got a great but lousy excuse for being lazy, but that’s no longer applicable. Since today I had to pick up my Taiwan passport at TECO SF, I figured that I might as well go visit a nearby museum. Unfortunately, the closest SFMOMA closes on Wednesday, so I changed my destination to the next closest one, Asian Art Museum of San Francisco (AAMSF).

It’s actually very strange that I had never visited AAMSF, considering that the Bart stop is only a couple of blocks away and Mulan’s mom has worked there as a curator for over 3 decades. My laziness amazes even myself!

To force myself getting out of the house and explore SF, I got myself two museum memberships: AAMSF and Fine Art Museum of SF (FAMSF). If I had read their brochures more carefully, I would’ve just got the more comprehensive membership (Contributor at AAMSF and Contributing at FAMSF) instead and saved myself some money. Well, now you know and you won’t make the same silly mistake like me.

I barely made it to its daily Architectural Tour, but I surely was glad that I made it. The tour guide was friendly and knowledgeable, and we learned more than we bargained for about this amazing building. Each of my tour mates was at least twice of my age, and everyone had a zest for history and museums. I even got the impression that some of them planned their retirement trips by traveling from one museum to another. It was incredible to see that old people were still curious about the world and had a thirst for knowledge. I can just see David and I doing something similar at our old age.

I didn’t expect to see everything today, so I only took few photos at the permitted area during the tour. This Indian (?) Bodhisattva is supposed to be the same as the one in Taiwan, but you can tell that he went through quite a bit of changes. For instance, he is a she in the Chinese culture, she’s well covered in white clothes, and her face is much more Chinese looking (not so obvious in this Taiwanese sculpture though). Our tour guide told us that he was her favorite object in the whole AAMSF, and she had seen all the collections for so many years. I’ll have to come back and check on his audio tour to learn more about him!

This is a fountain. Yes, a fountain! Everyone thought it was a big rock covered by a piece of transparent glass on top, but I heard water and suspected this art “table”. When the tour guide touched the surface to show us that it was a fountain, “WOW!” came out of everyone’s mouth. The Japanese artist (I’ll have to find out his name next time) spent 2 months grinding this stone, to make the top smooth and add an invisible seam at the edge. Water came up slowly at the center, at a pace unnoticeable on the flat surface, and went down quietly at the edge. Not a drop of water dripped down to the floor or the rock surface. It was indeed a piece of art!

I also checked out a couple of exhibitions (no photos are allowed): A Curious Affair: The Fascination between East and West and The Elegant Gathering: The Yeh Family Collection. The former was mostly disappointing; I don’t know if it was because my limited knowledge about the subject or what. The later one was far more interesting to me, because Yeh Gongchao was a famous political figure in Taiwan. It was also a thrill to me to see Zhang Daqian’s lotus painting. I was lucky to see Zhang’s exhibition at National Palace Museum (國立故宮博物院) in 1998; I didn’t know why he was that famous before, but after that exhibition, I became his big fan, especially his mind-blowing lotus paintings.

BTW, just want to mention that a new book coming out from AAMSF by Mulan and her mom, Terese, after 3 yeas of hard working. Pretty cool to see friends’ names on books!

A fun fact: A farmer’s market seems to happen every Wednesday. By the time I left the museum, a couple of fruit stands was still in operation.