The Art Exhibition

The Palace of Fine Arts was built to hold the Exposition's art exhibition, and that exhibition was enormous. It held 11,403 works, from a Sienese Madonna of the thirteenth century to the Italian Futurists, in about 150 galleries in the palace and an annex put up in a hurry when more pictures arrived than anyone expected. Its chief put it together through the first year of the war. Todd estimated that it drew ten million visits, and he says San Francisco argued about Cubism on the streetcars for the rest of the year.

John Trask's department

The Department of Fine Arts was headed by John E. D. Trask, appointed on November 9, 1912. He had been manager and secretary of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. In 1910 he had served as United States commissioner general for the art exhibitions at Buenos Aires and at Santiago, Chile. His assistant chief was Robert B. Harshe. J. Nilsen Laurvik, author of a book on the new modern art, who later ran the palace, went abroad to gather the foreign loans. Trask himself spent the fall of 1913 in Europe setting up advisory committees in London and Paris and visiting a string of other capitals. The department sent out about 9,000 invitations, and selection juries met in nine cities from London and Paris to Cincinnati and San Francisco.

The rules were strict. Copies, unframed pictures and sculpture in unbaked clay or wax were not accepted. Unlike many earlier fairs, the exhibition had no section for architecture or for arts and crafts. A separate Loan Collection was meant to show where modern technique came from. It ranged from a Madonna by Guido da Siena, which Todd dates to about 1235, and a fresco fragment of an angel by Bernardino Luini, to three landscapes by Claude Monet.

The building and the Annex

Bernard Maybeck's Palace of Fine Arts (see Architecture) was, unlike the other exhibit palaces, a steel-framed gallery curving around the lagoon. The palace and its annex cost $631,929 and gave 148,558 square feet of floor space. The main building had 120 exhibit galleries, and the domed rotunda in front served as an open-air sculpture court. Much of the American sculpture was set out along the colonnade and in the gardens. The Official Guide claimed this was the first time an exposition had thought outdoor display of sculpture feasible.

Even so, there was not enough room. More pictures were secured than anyone had planned for, especially after the war sent European works looking for a home. The Exposition put up a cubical two-story Annex next to the palace, finished by the beginning of July. It held the International Section, the pictures from countries without their own commissions, and Norway's exhibit. Todd counts 26 galleries in the Annex in one volume and 30 in another, which matches the numbering in the Official Catalogue.

Source: Todd, vol. 4, ch. V. The United States had 72 of the 120 galleries in the main building, "between 65 and 70 per cent of the whole building."

What the war did

The war wrecked some plans and created others. A German committee had organized an unofficial showing of some 400 German paintings. That fell through, but about three dozen German pictures arrived anyway. According to Todd, they had been exhibited at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh in 1914, sent home on a German ship, captured by a British cruiser, released by a prize court, and returned to America. Barry tells the story with a ship that simply turned back to an American port. A strong British section had been expected, but it did not materialize.

War also freed up art that could not go home. Laurvik went to Venice and found that the paintings shown at the 1914 international exhibition there could not be returned to their owners. He secured many of them for San Francisco, and he went on to Vienna and Budapest for more. The pre-opening Official Guide describes the stranded loans as coming from a "Vienna" exhibition, while Todd and Barry say Venice. Everything had to be shipped past the war, and the Exposition's solution was the Navy collier Jason (see Nations and States). Trask described one cargo in the catalogue:

"From Budapesth in turmoil, with packers and boxmakers quite fully occupied outside their usual sphere, a furniture moving van of huge proportions was secured as carrier. Well-filled with paintings it was brought intact on flat car to Genoa and thence upon the 'Jason' direct to San Francisco where for the first time it was unpacked at the very door of the Fine Arts Building."

J. E. D. Trask, introduction to the Catalogue de Luxe of the Department of Fine Arts (1915)

Barry adds that the Hungarian pictures were held up on the railway and reached Genoa three days after the Jason was due to sail. The Jason was three days late too. She anchored off the grounds on April 11, 1915. Trask wrote that most of the International Section came on her, along with French paintings and a bronze Lafayette by Paul Wayland Bartlett, cast in Paris from the original molds.

The Annex: Futurists, Kokoschka and Munch

The most surprising rooms at the fair were in the Annex. In Gallery 141, on the top floor, hung the Italian Futurists. By the catalogue's count there were forty-eight paintings: nine by Giacomo Balla, five by Umberto Boccioni, fifteen by Carlo Carrà, five by Luigi Russolo and fourteen by Gino Severini. There were also two sculptures by Boccioni, Development of a Bottle in Space and Muscles in Quick Motion. The catalogue printed Boccioni's own introduction.

"We may declare, without boasting, that the first exhibition of Italian futurist painting, recently held in Paris and London and now brought to San Francisco, is the most important exhibition of Italian painting which has hitherto been offered to the judgment of America."

Umberto Boccioni, in the Catalogue de Luxe of the Department of Fine Arts (1915)

A modern historian has called it the first exhibition of Italian Futurist painting in the United States. The 1915 sources don't say so outright, but none of them mentions an earlier one. Todd, who admitted he knew nothing about art, watched the public's reaction with some amusement.

"How hard people studied those blue and purple fields of slashed wall-paper, and how earnestly they strove to decipher cabalistic portents from such sculptural abstractions as 'Muscles in Motion'! They read books about the matter, and discussed it in paper-clubs, and were mentally aroused, excited, and rejuvenated."

Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. 4 (1921)

Other rooms nearby were just as new to American audiences. The Austrian painter Oskar Kokoschka had a corner room on the Annex's top floor, with portraits of the architect Adolf Loos, the composer Egon Wellesz, the writers Peter Altenberg and Karl Kraus, and himself. Barry spells his name "Kakosha." Norway filled seven galleries with 333 works. They included a room for Frits Thaulow and a room for Harald Sohlberg, who won a Medal of Honor, and paintings by Edvard Munch, among them his Summer Night in Aasgaardstrand. Munch won a gold medal; Michael Williams's guide says it was for watercolor, and the catalogue lists it with his prints. The Finnish painter Axel Gallen-Kallela had a room of his own and a Medal of Honor. Hungary's section ran from academic painting to what Williams called "ultra-modern" rooms, and István Csók, Lajos Márk and János Vaszary won gold medals. The French painter Albert Besnard had a room of his pictures of India, which Laurvik had found in Rome.

The American galleries

Most of the exhibition was American, and it was organized around individual artists. Whole rooms went to James McNeill Whistler (two, one of them for his etchings and lithographs), John Singer Sargent, William Merritt Chase, Childe Hassam, Frank Duveneck, Gari Melchers, Edmund Tarbell, John Twachtman, Edward Redfield, Joseph Pennell and Howard Pyle. California's own painters were honored with rooms for William Keith and for Arthur Mathews and Francis McComas. These artists were shown hors concours, out of competition. Frank Duveneck, who sat on the juries, received a special commemorative medal from the Exposition for his work and teaching. The Grand Prize for painting went to Frederick Carl Frieseke, chiefly for his picture Summer. A separate historical section held nearly 250 older American works, including five portraits by Gilbert Stuart.

The jury, chaired by J. Alden Weir, called it "the best exhibition of painting, engraving, and sculpture ever held in the United States." Among the foreign prizewinners were Carl Larsson and Bruno Liljefors of Sweden, José Malhoa of Portugal and G. H. Breitner of the Netherlands, all Grand Prizes. Frank Brangwyn won a Medal of Honor for his etchings, and Franz von Stuck and Heinrich von Zügel won Medals of Honor for Germany, showing in the International Section.

Japan, China and the rest

Japan had ten galleries. One was a reference room tracing twelve hundred years of Japanese art, and many works were lent by the Imperial Household. China had four, where about 300 scrolls from the collection of Liu Sung Fu of Shanghai were hung about a hundred at a time, with the collector himself in attendance. Sweden had nine galleries, which Todd remembered for their marine and winter scenes. France had eight, Italy five, the Netherlands four, and Portugal, Argentina, Cuba, Uruguay and the Philippines one to three each. Denmark hung its pictures in its own pavilion and not in the palace.

The crowds

Counts taken on several days showed that 55 or 56 percent of everyone who entered the Exposition went into the galleries. Todd estimated the season's total at "not less than 10,000,000 visits." Three docents led tours for a small fee, and Harshe wrote a "Reader's Guide to Modern Art" for visitors who wanted to know what they were looking at. The department also sold art on commission, for 15 percent. It made 1,611 sales worth $227,121, to buyers in thirty-four states and Canada. Trask also fought a small war against wheeled chairs in the galleries.

"They might not care for 'cubism' or 'futurism' but at least it gave them a fresh topic of debate on the street car or the ferry boat."

Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. 4 (1921)

Todd ended his chapter on the art with a joke at his own expense: "The Chief says the best thing about it is its convincing internal evidence of having been written by somebody that knew nothing whatever about art."

After closing day

When the Exposition closed on December 4, 1915, the Palace of Fine Arts stayed open. A petition nearly three inches thick asked that it be kept, and the directors agreed to keep it open until May 1, 1916. Trask and the painter Francis McComas went east to borrow replacements for works that had to go home. On January 1, 1916, a Post-Exposition exhibition opened, with pictures moved from the Annex into the main building, most of the sculpture left in place, and Brangwyn's murals from the Court of Abundance hung indoors. It sold another $33,607 worth of art. On April 29, 1916, an Artists' Ball in the empty California Building raised about $3,000 toward the $30,000 a year it cost to run the palace. With nearly $23,000 already raised by the San Francisco Art Association, the Exposition turned the building over to the Association, with Laurvik as director. About 47,000 people visited between mid-May and mid-September 1916.

The palace was built to last a year, and it lasted decades, though not in good condition. According to the state's historical landmark nomination, it served as an art gallery until 1924. After that it was put to many uses: tennis courts, occasional exhibitions, WPA murals in the rotunda in the 1930s, and an Army warehouse during World War II, which did it great damage. Other accounts add a telephone-book depot and a fire station. It was closed to the public in 1952. Maybeck told a columnist in 1953 that he would tear down the crumbling main building and plant redwoods, though in 1957, the year he died, he asked the governor to fund its restoration.

The rescue took a decade. The state appropriated $2 million in July 1957. In May 1959 Walter S. Johnson pledged $2 million of his own, and that November voters passed a city bond. Estimates kept rising, and in the end the palace was rebuilt, not restored. Demolition of the old rotunda began on October 15, 1964. The architect Hans U. Gerson, with Welton Becket & Associates, rebuilt it in concrete, and the new palace was dedicated with a ten-day festival beginning September 29, 1967. The whole project cost $7.6 million. The exhibition hall kept its original steel frame but lost its exterior ornament. A theater opened in part of the hall in 1970. The Exploratorium, the science museum founded by Frank Oppenheimer, occupied most of the rest from 1969 until January 2, 2013, when it moved to Pier 15.

A seismic and restoration project of about $21 million, carried out by the city with the private Maybeck Foundation, began in 2004 and worked on the rotunda, colonnades and lagoon. San Francisco Public Works dates its final phase to 2009, and the San Francisco Chronicle reported the restored palace reopening in January 2011. The palace is a San Francisco landmark and has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 2005. What Survived covers its other lives, and Visiting the Site Today explains how to see it.

Sources

• Frank Morton Todd, The Story of the Exposition (1921): vol. 4, chs. III–V ("Assembling a Great Art Exhibition," "In a Palace Garden," "Within the Palace of Fine Arts"); vol. 2, ch. I (areas), ch. XXVI (the Jason); vol. 5, chs. XXIII, XXXVIII (preservation; the Art Association).
• Official Catalogue of the Department of Fine Arts, Panama-Pacific International Exposition (with Awards) (San Francisco: Wahlgreen, 1915).
• John E. D. Trask and J. Nilsen Laurvik, eds., Catalogue de Luxe of the Department of Fine Arts, 2 vols. (San Francisco: Paul Elder, 1915).
• Michael Williams, A Brief Guide to the Department of Fine Arts (1915); Christian Brinton, Impressions of the Art at the Panama-Pacific Exposition (1916); Illustrated Catalogue of the Post-Exposition Exhibition in the Department of Fine Arts (San Francisco Art Association, 1916).
• John D. Barry, The City of Domes (1915); Official Guide (1915).
• California Office of Historic Preservation, California Historical Landmark nomination, "Palace of Fine Arts" (recorded 2021), for the palace's history from 1916 to the present.
• Exploratorium press release, "Exploratorium's Last Day at the Palace of Fine Arts – January 2, 2013"; San Francisco Public Works, "Palace of Fine Arts Restoration"; Carl Nolte, "Restored San Francisco Palace of Fine Arts to open," San Francisco Chronicle (January 2011).
• Jaap Harskamp, "Futurism in New York," New York Almanack (2022), on the Futurists' first American showing.