Can it be that autumn is already upon us? One perusal of the upcoming exhibition schedule for area museums, and you know that summer is over and it's time to get serious. This season serves up a generous helping of Impressionism, Asian art or a combination of the two, exciting shows to delight and provoke photography aficionados, and more. The following are highlights of what's in store for the museum-inclined in the next few months.
GLBT History Museum The Historical Society's repository of GLBT experience opens this October in a converted storefront near the corner of 18th and Castro Streets. The debut show, organized in 25 sections, tells multiple stories of GLBT life in the Bay Area, from the end of the 19th century to the present, through a variety of multimedia exhibits, historical artifacts, photographs, documents, audio recordings, films and videos. www.glbthistory.org/museum
The Beat Museum On the Road Around the World. Kerouac lived fast, died young and has been immortalized in the literary imagination and popular culture, largely due to the phenomenal success of On the Road, his 1957 Bible for the young and restless, on the move and in flight from responsibility. If you doubted the pervasiveness of the myth or its seductive power, check out the 100 different copies of the book published in 25 languages on view at this show, along with artifacts, snapshots, flyers, news articles, antique typewriters (Kerouac wrote single-spaced) and black-and-white pictures of eternally youthful pals Cassady, Corso, Ginsberg and bad boy Burroughs. An annotated manuscript of Howl with notes scribbled in the margins by Kerouac, who also reads excerpts from On the Road to the chords of a jazz pianist in an old video, are also here. (Through Dec. 31.) www.thebeatmuseum.org
Berkeley Art Museum Flowers of the Four Seasons: Ten Centuries of Art from the Clark Center for Japanese Art and Culture. Drawn from the Willard Clark collection, Japan's artistic traditions, ancient and modern, are expressed in works that embrace Buddhist art, literati painting, daily life, nature, bamboo sculpture and contemporary ceramics. (Through Dec. 12.) www.bampfa.berkeley.edu
Fine Arts Museums Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cezanne and Beyond: Post-Impressionist Masterpieces from the Musee d'Orsay is the second of two Impressionist shows at the de Young featuring works on loan from the famous Parisian treasure trove of 19th-century French art. Merci, Paris. While the first show, which closes Sept. 6, concentrated on context and the blossoming of the Impressionists, who rebelled (some more than others) against the orthodoxy of the Paris Salon, this show focuses on 100 late Impressionist paintings by Monet, Renoir, Bonnard, Seurat, Toulouse-Lautrec, Vuillard and the rest of the gang. Short of booking a flight to Paris, this is your best chance to see these masterworks. (Sept. 25-Jan. 18, 2011.) Meanwhile at the Legion of Honor, Japanesque: The Japanese Print in the Era of Impressionism charts the evolution of the Japanese print over two centuries (1700-1900) and studies its profound impact on Western art and aesthetic taste, through 250 prints by French and American artists of the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist period. (Oct. 16-Jan. 9, 2011.) www.famsf.org
Asian Art Museum Beyond Golden Clouds: Five Centuries of Japanese Screens. Named after a prevalent motif, this special exhibition, which represents the apex of Japanese painting, includes 41 rarely seen, large-scale folding screens done in traditional paper and silk, stoneware and varnish, dating back to the late 16th century, as well as pieces by contemporary artists. (Oct. 15-Jan. 16, 2011.) www.asianart.org
SFMOMAThe watchword is photography, as in a pair of can't-miss exhibitions that open here Oct. 30: Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Modern Century, a major career retrospective of the innovative, original artist credited with developing street photography and photo-reportage, and whose influence on modern photography cannot be overstated. (Through Jan. 30, 2011.) Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera Since 1870, a survey of the camera's role in the invasion of our space and fast-vanishing privacy. It presents works by artists such as Walker Evans, Bresson, Nan Goldin, Paul Strand and Brassai, alongside contributions by amateurs, journalists and government agencies. Yes, technological advances come at a cost, but with a show that's divided into five areas of Forbidden Looking, how can one go wrong? (Through Apr. 17, 2011.) Just spotted a compromising snapshot of yourself on Facebook and feeling the urge to drown your shame? Lift a glass to How Wine Became Modern: Design + Wine 1976 to Now, which probes the marketing, architecture and industry of a cultural obsession dear to the palette. (Nov. 20-Apr. 17, 2011.) www.sfmoma.org
Contemporary Jewish Museum Reclaimed: Paintings from the Collection of Jacques Goudstikker explores the legacy of the prominent Amsterdam art-dealer whose collection of some 1,400 masterpieces was appropriated by Herman Goring and became part of the Nazi plunder. In 2006, after working with a team of art historians and legal experts, Goudstikker's family reclaimed 200 paintings from the Dutch government. The show features nearly 45 of the finest examples of that recovered art, along with original documents and photographs. (Oct. 29-March 29, 2011.)
Illustrator H.A. Rey and his wife, author and artist Margret Rey, Jews living in Paris during the late 1930s, fled the city with drawings for children's stories and a manuscript starring an impish monkey, hours before the Nazis marched on the city in 1940. Saving the day after a narrow escape became the premise of many a Curious George adventure, a subject central to seven of their 30 books. Curious George Saves the Day: The Art of Margret and H.A. Rey presents nearly 80 original drawings of the resourceful monkey, and other characters, dummy books, vintage photographs, and documentation related to the Reys' harrowing escape from Nazi Europe. (Nov. 14-March 13, 2011.) [email protected]