Legion of Honor

Legion of Honor
Category: Museums
Neighborhood: Outer Richmond
5/14/2009
"Someone out to tell them [Americans] how to behave in a museum. They talk as if they were at home..."

Charles Dantzig quoted in "Objectif Lune," in Harper's magazine, May 2009.
from Encyclopédie capricieuse du tout et du rien.

Just a suggestion.

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Perhaps because of its astonishing location, its large collection of French painting, and its association with France (the museum is dedicated to those Californians who lost their lives on the battlefields of France during the first world war), a visit to the Legion of Honor actually is rather subdued in terms of the visitor behavior (The French, understandably, make this a point of pilgrimage).

Among the well-known French painters represented in the Legion's collections are La Tour, Watteau, Monet, Manet, and David; other European masters include Fra Angelico, Rembrandt, Tiepolo, Rubens, and El Greco.

The hues of the Monet waterlilies--rosy pink, sapphire blue, dark green--are like a mirror reflection of the environs of the Legion d'Honneur.

No need to go to Stanford (or the Musee Rodin in Paris, for that matter)--with a larger, more importance collection--to experience Rodin.

http://paris-ile-de-fr...

Not only is there a postcard-worthy Rodin (a bronze cast of "The Thinker" at the peristyle that leads to the entrance, there is one whole room devoted to Rodin sculpture, with models of figures from "The Burghers of Calais," and other busts or figures, many of them barely emerged from the marble.

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The Legion of Honor is located in the most breathtaking setting for an American museum, possibly excepting the Getty Museum in Los Angeles.
The view of the Golden Gate Bridge, the cypresses, the almost sapphire blue of the Pacific Ocean practically at one's feet, and the walk down towards Land's End are astonishing.

The building itself in its monumental pristine white Beaux Arts classicism is is imposing as its location.

The pricey but spacious cafe in the basement has an outdoors terrace from which one can relax in, contemplate, and admire the beautiful environs high above San Francisco Bay.
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