The Scenery
When you hear "museum of fine art", monstrous institutions like the
Metropolitan or the Louvre comes to mind. Don't be scared, the Legion of
Honor Fine Art Museum is not one of those. You can be visit it in a couple
of couple hours, and you will then have enough time for walk in the fabulous
Lincoln Park, home of Legion of Honor. Weather permitting (you know how it
is in San Francisco), you will have nice views on the Golden Gate bridge and
the San Francisco downtown from the park.
The Permanent Collection
The museum have has a nice collection of Italian paintings from the early
Renaissance. It also features impressionism paintings from Monet, Degas,
Sisley and Guillaumin. One big plus of the museum is its Web site: almost
all the works of art from the collections have been digitized and can be
seen directly on the museum's Web site.
Leonardo da Vinci
At the time of this writing, the museum features a special exhibit titled
Leonardo da Vinci and the Splendor of Poland. The key of this exhibit is da
Vinci's painting Portrait of a Lady with the Ermine. Other paintings are all
from Poland and are quite unimpressive. They were lent by the Czartoryski
Museum in Krakow who owns the Lady with the Ermine as well as other Polish
museums. Even though featuring da Vinci's masterpiece at the Legion is a
well received achievement, the $4 surcharge for this special exhibit remains
excessive.
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