San Francisco - De Young Museum (formerly M H de Young Memorial Museum)

The M H de Young Memorial Museum is the oldest museum in San Francisco. While art and period interiors from North America - especially the USA from the Colonial period to the 20th century - feature strongly in the collection, there are also many exhibits from Egypt, Greece, Rome and the Near East. British art, and folk art from Africa, America and the Pacific Islands, are also represented.

The original museum building was an art gallery, purpose-built for the International Californian Exposition held in Golden Gate Park in 1894. Afterwards the Exposition's director, the newspaper proprietor Michael H de Young (1849-1925), was charged with setting up a permanent museum. The collection at that time consisted of just a few items remaining from the exhibition. Over the next quarter of a century benefactions made possible the continuous, planned expansion of the museum, as a result of which more and more extensions were added until, in 1921, the old building in Egyptian style - of which two sphinxes are the only remaining sign - was finally replaced by more up-to-date premises.

It was at this time that the museum was given its present name, acknowledging the contribution of its founder and earliest benefactor. Today it has some 40 galleries and more than 200,000sq.ft/18,500sq.m of exhibition space. The inner court is named after the newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, proprietor of the "San Francisco Examiner", who was determined not to be outdone by his colleague M H de Young, proprietor of the "San Francisco Chronicle", when it came to endowing the museum.

Unlike the majority of American museums this one is not privately run; it depends entirely for its support on the city which, a few years ago, found itself obliged to charge for admission.