The De Young Museum in the News: View articles from local news organizations following the history of the new Museum and broad spectrum of viewpoints on the project's site, design, funding, and impact on the city of San Francisco Case Study Process: View the case study team's minutes from meeting with various parties involved in the project Internet Resources on the De Young: Follow links to web sites which provide additional facts and opinions about the Museum, including the web site of the project's owner, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
  Who Was Involved: View a list of parties involved in the design and construction of the Museum as well as the members of the case study team What Were the Team's Milestones: View assignments for the UC Berkeley Building Stories (A229B) and Internship (A128) classes What was Found: View the case study team's initial findings regarding the key issues defining the project

 

Fall 2002 Department of Architecture
UC Berkeley

 

THE CLIENT/OWNER:

      The owner and client for the De Young museum is a rather complex group whose structure and legal composition influenced the process through which the building would be approved and built. The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco is a city organization. The city owns the land, the buildings, and all of the museums' assets and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco has charter authority to govern the running and organization of the museums. They have an annual budget paid by the city. In the 1970s, Proposition 13 cut public funding of the arts by 70%. More recently, arts funding has dropped further because the slowdown of the economy has decreased revenue from the hotel tax which funds the arts. The Corporation of the Fine Arts Museums, a private non-profit, was organized to raise money for the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco as a compensation for the loss of public funds. COFAM was asked by the FAMSF to be the developer for the project. COFAM's team, led by Deborah Frieden, has managed the process from the initial RFP and they are raising private monies to fund the project.
      The advantages of this structure for COFAM and FAMSF are that the project does not have to be approved by the city and it is not subject to as much public review. FAMSF has charter authority over the museum so they do not need approval from groups like the Department of Public Works even though they are working with public assets. Publicly funded projects are subject to more public review and approval than privately funded projects. The public had access to information presented at FAMSF board meetings because the meetings are governed by the Sunshine Laws, and they had access to the Environmental Impact Report, but beyond that COFAM had control over what information would be released to the public. Public approval of the design was not required. Despite a small, but very vocal opposition to the design, both the client and the architect, Fong and Chan, feel that the effect of this public opposition of the design and its approval, was minimal.

WHY THE NEW DE YOUNG MUSEUM IS BEING BUILT:

      The decision to build a new De Young Museum was motivated by concerns regarding the building's structural stability. In 1987 and 1992 seismic evaluations of all city owned buildings were conducted by the city engineer. The 1992 report rated the De Young the worst civic building in SF seismically. It had the potential for catastrophic collapse in the event of a major earthquake. COFAM and The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco began a project to brace the old building because of the danger the seismic instability posed to both the patrons of the museum and to its diverse collection. Planning was then begun to build a new home for the M.H. de Young collection that would be seismically safe and architecturally coherent. The old building had been modified and added to several times since its construction for the California Midwinter International Exposition in 1894. It was lost a sense of overall continuity and this was an opportunity to give the museum new architectural distinction.

Owner/Client Structure and Basis for the Project