Breathing Flower, 2011, by Choi Jeong Hwa (Korea)

Jay Xu, director of San Francisco's Asian Art Museum, started off with some numbers about the museum's new exhibit, Phantoms of Asia: Contemporary Awakens the Past: 31 artists from 15 countries, and 60 new works of art.

Those 31 artists are all living, and from countries including Japan, Hong Kong, Pakistan, Canada, and Thailand, came to the museum to discuss and display their work. That's something different for the Asian, which has one of the largest collections of historical traditional Asian art in the world. Phantoms, exploring Asian cosmology, is the museum's first large scale exhibit of contemporary art, and the museum is pulling out all the stops - parties, galas, conversations with the artists, a talk by Holland Cotter, a New York Times art critic, a discussion with the curators on where contemporary Asian art is going, and free admission to the museum on Saturday, May 19, as part of the Asian Heritage Street Celebration at Civic Center Plaza, in front of the museum.

Xu says there's another important number associated with the exhibit - the 80 works from the museum's classic collection that are on display, juxtaposed with the contemporary works.

"So much of this story is about diversity, but it's also about interconnectivity," Xu said. "It's a dialogue between old and new"

Xu made these remarks standing in the Civic Center Plaza in front of the largest of the new works of art - Breathing Flower, a 24-foot kinetic sculpture by artist Choi Jeong Hwa of a red lotus that is illuminated at night.

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Edward Hopper

Heres how seriously SFMOMA takes Intermission (1963) -- we bet you won't read it all: Collection SFMOMA, purchase in memory of Elaine McKeon, chair, SFMOMA Board of Trustees (1995-2004), with funds provided in part by the Fisher and Schwab Families; © Heirs of Josephine N. Hopper, licensed by the Whitney Museum of American Art; photo courtesy Fraenkel Gallery

Cultural institutions in San Francisco continually search for new acquisitions. Alexis Coe brings you the most important, often wondrous, sometimes bizarre, and occasionally downright vexing finds each week.

Next Thursday (May 17), moneyed admirers of American artist Edward Hopper can bid on the painting Bridle Path (1939) at Sotheby's for an estimated $5 million to $7 million. SFMOMA described the work as being "of interest to Hopper scholars as an atypical work by the artist." In the very same press release, the museum announced the acquisition of Intermission (1963), which is "recognized as one of his best works."

But this is not an article about SFMOMA's recent acquisition, or even its "deaccession" of Bridle Path, which might confuse regular readers of this series. Recent Acquisitions has reported on additions to Bay Area cultural institutions, whether esoteric pieces or adorable fuzzy animals. It is important to understand, however, that acquisitions have a necessary accomplice within the world of collections strategy: the deacqusition, better known as the deaccession.

Institutions are rarely as forthcoming as SFMOMA, and with good reason: Certain news organizations have treated the process as scandal. When mistakes were made, they made headlines. Any sale, trade, or donation might ignite a firestorm of controversy, creating a false sense of urgency.

This unwanted attention has put cultural institutions on the defensive. Indeed, it was challenging to find arts employees willing to discuss the subject on record, if at all, but transparency is imperative - particularly when the process of deaccessioning is not only crucial, but necessary.

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Eadweard Muybridge

Cultural institutions in San Francisco continually search for new acquisitions. Alexis Coe brings you the most important, often wondrous, sometimes bizarre, and occasionally downright vexing finds each week.

Curator Jamie O'Keefe was conducting a standard inventory check at the San Francisco Fire Department Museum when she noticed tiny lettering in the corner of a photograph: Muybridge Studio.

O'Keefe was floored. Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904) was best known for his pioneering work in motion photography. (Read a review of his 2011 exhibit at SFMOMA, "Helios: Eadweard Muybridge in a Time of Change.") The photographer was known for using 12 to 24 cameras at a time and his own shutter in an attempt to create images of suspended motion, resulting in a visual illusion of movement. He has been the focus of major exhibitions worldwide, most notably at the Tate Britain, the Smithsonian, and the Bay Area's own Cantor Center at Stanford University.

What's left of his portfolio is sought after by serious collectors and pre-eminent institutions across the globe -- and the images don't come cheap. Artnet estimates that Muybridge's famous Animal Locomotion plates sold, at auction in 2009, for a $45,000.

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When it launched in 1952, there had been nothing like MAD -- a comics magazine dedicated to humor and satire aimed at a broad range of targets. In particular, MAD exposed the cultural fakery behind familiar and beloved images that originated on television, in the movies, and in sports and politics. Led by creators Harvey Kurtzman and William Gaines, MAD's cartoonists peeled back these images to expose calculated manipulation of the American populace by newly powerful postwar corporations. A retrospective exhibit on MAD opens this weekend at the Cartoon Art Museum.

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Terry Lorant

Daniel Clowes

"Up until four or five years ago, I still thought of myself as a Midwesterner," says Daniel Clowes, who has called Oakland home for two decades. "I'd close my eyes and see water towers and Chicago at night. And then one day I was closing my eyes and seeing palm trees and the Paramount Theater."

With deadpan delivery he continues, "I'm a regional artist now. That's my goal, is in my obituary it'll say, 'Noted regionalist.'"

Noted regionalist Clowes is making a lot of noise for "The Town" in the way that only a quiet but incredible illustrator can. He is currently developing a feature film adaptation of his most recent graphic novel Wilson, which is set in Oakland. Fox Searchlight plans to shoot the movie there.

Tamara Palmer

Clowes previews "Modern Cartoonist" at the Oakland Museum of California.

Clowes also now has his first-ever exhibition in any part of the country: "Modern Cartoonist: The Art of Daniel Clowes," on view starting Saturday (April 14) at the Oakland Museum of California.

His full body of work is on display, including his best-known comic series Eightball and the graphic novel Ghost World, the film adaptation of which launched the film career of Scarlett Johansson. Clowes calls himself a "hoarder" because he has kept his original drawings; he sure never envisioned they'd go up on the walls of a museum one day.

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Kate Conger

Fashion icons Dita Von Teese and Jean Paul Gaultier celebrate Gaultier's exhibition at La Grande Fete on Friday at the de Young Museum.

Known in the fashion world as the enfant terrible, Jean Paul Gaultier maintains his exuberantly youthful attitude after nearly 40 years as an haute couture designer. It's apparent in his abundant enthusiasm for telling stories -- particularly about growing up with his grandmother -- as well as his consistent chuckle and his stride, which is occasionally punctuated with little skips.

The couturier, in San Francisco for the unveiling of his retrospective exhibition at the de Young Museum, earned the nickname in his school days. Always an outcast because he didn't play football, he recounts getting his knuckles smacked by a teacher for sketching a Foiles Bergère girl during class. The teacher safety-pinned the sketch to the back of his shirt and made him parade around the classroom with it, hoping to humiliate him. Instead, the sketch won him acceptance among the other boys, who asked him to draw similar pictures for them to keep. This formative experience led the French bad-boy to realize that his drawing was "like a passport" that would open doors for him throughout his life.

"It gave me some kind of strongness in myself," Gaultier said. "Through my sketch, I could do whatever I wanted."

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Rarely does one get access to the magical creations of haute couture, fashion works of art that by definition are handmade and shown in Paris exclusively. Which is why we are still freaking out about our viewing of "The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk" on Thursday at the de Young Museum, where 140 of his haute couture works of art (including a set of rotating bustiers in a video clip below) are on display in a meta-exhibition.

The mannequins on which robes hang are not merely hangers, but expressive faces that move and talk. There are videos, large-format photographs by prominent photographers, illustrations, and a rotating catwalk. The scale and depth of the exhibition is impressive, but there are so many works that it does get overwhelming, especially with all the multimedia distractions.

That is, until you realize you have real-life garments in front of you, sewn by fairy-tale-like seamstresses, begging to be looked at and admired.

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Ray Johnson

Man O' War

Cultural institutions in San Francisco continually search for new acquisitions. Alexis Coe brings you the most important, often wondrous, sometimes bizarre, and occasionally downright vexing finds each week.

Last fall, Larry Rinder found himself standing before artist Ray Johnson's Man O' War in Manhattan's Richard L. Feigen Gallery. Rinder, director of the Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive, was transfixed by Johnson's collage. At the same time, BAM/PFA Chief Curator Lucinda Barnes was in the throes of planning an exhibition highlighting Johnson's work (among other things) yet the museum owned none of his pieces.

Johnson (1927-1995) is remembered as "New York's most famous unknown artist." He founded the "Mail art" cultural movement in the 1960s, wherein visual art is sent through the international postal system. He was closely connected to major artists at the time, including Andy Warhol and Jasper Johns. He participated in performance art as part of the Fluxus movement, and many still speculate his suicidal leap off a bridge in Sag Harbor, Long Island, was a final realization of his work.

Barnes believes Johnson remained in the shadow of his better-known contemporaries "because of the very nature of his art-collage, mail art, and performance." She sought to rectify this through the acquisition of Man O' War, now on display in the exhibition "Tables of Content: Ray Johnson & Robert Warner Bob Box Archive/MATRIX 241."

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The Museum of Craft and Design's new home

When Brett Levine left the Visual Arts Gallery in Birmingham to become the first full-time curator at San Francisco's Museum of Craft and Design, he bid farewell to a permanent space and faced the realities of a wandering museum. Once located on Sutter Street in Union Square, the museum found itself homeless in 2010. Seizing the opportunity to expand its audience and function in a time of peril, the Museum launched a series of pop-up museums in temporary locations throughout San Francisco. In the past two weeks, it was announced that the Museum of Craft and Design will move into the historic American Industrial Center at 2569 Third Street.

Levine arrived in December 2011, and we spoke to him recently to see how he's adjusting to the life of a pop-up curator, and what the new space means for the future of the museum's pop-ups.

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From In Masks the Times Proceed: The Works of Make-Up Artist Wolfgang Utz

Cultural institutions in San Francisco continually search for new acquisitions. Alexis Coe brings you the most important, often wondrous, sometimes bizarre, and occasionally downright vexing finds each week.

"I really must stay away, but I can't," Bill Eddleman declares. He's talking about the Buecher Bogan bookstore in Berlin, a dangerous place for the Stanford University emeritus professor of drama. He recently purchased the visually sumptuous book In Masks the Times Proceed: The Works of Make-Up Artist Wolfgang Utz for the Museum of Performance & Design. It's one of more than 800 he has donated. Eddleman has long since retired from teaching, but you would not know it. He actively collects for the museum, secures donors, delivers lectures, designs exhibitions, and dominates just about every facet of the institution.

The Museum of Performance & Design is an overlooked treasure in San Francisco, acting as the repository for the history of the performing arts in the city. Obscured by the stone façade of the Veteran's Building on Van Ness, the museum occupies most of the fourth floor. In addition to an extensive and underused library, there is a main exhibition gallery, where the book on Utz can be seen, but like much about museum, there is dearth of space. Exhibitions spill out into the hallways, lining the otherwise unremarkable walls with varied reproductions and enchanting displays, including "Toy Theaters: Worlds in Miniature," and "Selections from the Bob Johnson Sheet Music Collection."

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