FOCUS
San Francisco's Asian museum brings comfort, controversy
By John Griffin
"In troubled times, people go to museums for solace."
Speaking was Emily Sano, director of San Francisco's smashing Asian Art Museum. We were at a press briefing shortly before the 36-year-old institution reopened in its new location, the dramatically remodeled old main library building in the city's downtown Civic Center.
In fact, the times are so troubled that some wondered about a museum's relevance amid news not only of the war in Iraq but also of the possibility of another, even worse, conflict with North Korea.
Protests swept through central San Francisco and the Bay Area, focusing on the war but also including the environment, "oil" as a symptom of national over-consumption, civil rights and the economy.
San Francisco's economic woes following the dot-com bust are well documented by businesses struggling to hold on and come back. If you missed the point, it came home outside the museum in the "showplace" plaza, where countless homeless people live and sometimes use the reflecting pools for toilets.
Still, Sano, a Japanese American, was right. For not only is the old-new museum an island of beauty and artistic challenge amid harsher realities, it also offers hope and reminders of change.
Backers hope for a tourism boost. Sano projects up to 400,000 museum visitors a year. That would be double the number who found their way to the old location in Golden Gate Park, where the separate Asian art institution often was overshadowed by the adjoining DeYoung Museum.
It's also possible to view the museum's move and growth as part of the colorful and checkered history of a beautiful American city. For San Francisco also saw much homelessness back in the post-Gold Rush days; it has boomed, busted and burned down, and at times been a showplace for greed, racial strife and political scandal.
The elevation of Asian art there now is also fitting because it highlights the growth and influence of America's Asian community.
With a population that is now 31 percent Asian, it's appropriate that San Francisco will have the West Coast's pre-eminent Asian art collection, showing some 2,500 of its 14,000 pieces at any one time.
By coincidence the influence of Asians in American life got another boost that week with the showing of Bill Moyers' three-part public television series on how the Chinese struggled and made it in this country, including the story of Hawai'i's own U.S. Sen. Hiram Fong.
Of course, it wouldn't be San Francisco without controversy. And the Asian Art Museum has had its share — over leaving Golden Gate Park, removing some murals from the old library, and the Western Beaux-Arts exterior of the restored building.
Then there are some points touched on by author and journalist William Wong in an op-ed article in the San Francisco Chronicle as the relocated museum opened:
"I don't want to ignite a class war among us yellows and don't want to disrespect the visionaries, organizers and supporters of such cultural institutions as the Asian Arts Museum or PBS. Perhaps the timing is unfortunate that mainstream cultural events focus on Asians and Asian Americans just as our nation is about to bomb to smithereens a society that has descended from the cradle of civilization ... "
Above all, what I got out of spending three hours listening to director Sano's PowerPoint introduction and touring galleries arranged by region was the obvious point that we must see art as part of our lives, and at times a celebration of society. After all, if there are many peaceful Buddhas on display in the galleries, you also find warriors.
I end up wondering how this transplanted museum will fit in the central city. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art moved to impressive new quarters south of Market Street and became a leading tourism attraction.
The Asian Arts Museum is dramatic inside in some aspects, although not as stunning as the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, which was transformed from a rundown 1900 train station by the same Italian architect, Gae Aulenti, who guided the project in San Francisco.
Whatever else, it is already a tribute to successful fund-raising, private and public.
Its overall cost will be $160 million-plus. Raised to date is $157 million, including $52 million in city bond money. Indeed, the Asian Art Museum now has a secondary name, "The Chong-Moon Lee Center for Asian Art and Culture."
That's in honor of a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who donated $15 million to the museum's capital campaign.
Finally, I think about this in relation to our own outstanding Honolulu Academy of Arts, and how it fits into Hawai'i's evolving community with its many interests.
Stephen Little, the academy's new director, who also has worked at both museums in the past, notes they are different institutions.
He says the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco has one of the top six museum collections of Asian art in the United States. Its focus is only on such art.
In contrast, the Honolulu Academy of Arts has one of the top 10 Asian art collections and is also more general. It has some 37,000 pieces of art, including about 20,000 on paper, such as the great James Michener collection of Japanese wood-block prints.
Still, if the academy is more comprehensive, including with Hawaiian art, it also offers a special cross-cultural perspective. "East Meets West" is a theme in new galleries. Little, like recently retired director George Ellis, is an Asian art specialist.
So, as we found in San Francisco, this is a good time to visit a museum, here as well as there. You are not escaping from life so much as appreciating its true dimensions and glories.
John Griffin, former editor of The Advertiser's editorial pages, is a frequent contributor.
