SAN FRANCISCO, CA.- The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, comprising the de Young and the Legion of Honor, today announced the completion of a multiyear Gifts of Art campaign that has strengthened every curatorial area of the permanent collection. Gifts of Art garnered more than 2,000 outstanding gifts from 275 donors, far surpassing its preliminary goal, embodying the generous Bay Area spirit that has underpinned the evolution of the Fine Arts Museums’ collections since their founding.

In his first major campaign as Director and CEO of the Fine Arts Museums, Thomas P. Campbell initiated a call in 2022 for 100 transformative gifts of art to commemorate two momentous anniversaries. The first of these was the 50th anniversary of the creation of the Fine Arts Museums. In 1972, the city charter joined the de Young and Legion of Honor museums under one governance with a new name, creating the largest public arts institution in Northern California.

Gifts of Art also aimed to build excitement for the Legion of Honor 100. The Legion of Honor first opened its doors to the San Francisco public on November 11, 1924, and has since evolved into a beloved center for scholarship and presentation of European paintings, decorative arts, sculpture, and art of the ancient Mediterranean. It is also home to the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, one of the largest collections of prints, drawings, photographs, and artist-illustrated books in the United States.

“The Gifts of Art campaign is a significant milestone in the history of the Fine Arts Museums and I am humbled and inspired by the exceptional generosity of donors set on a common goal: to make extraordinary works of art accessible to our creative, curious, and engaged Bay Area audiences,” said Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. “The succession of two landmark anniversaries offered opportunities to reflect on the distinct identities and strengths of our collections—and the profound legacy of the thousands of steadfast supporters who have helped shape them over the years with generous donations of art”

Gifts of Art aimed to engage both longtime supporters as well as a new generation of civic-minded philanthropists. The call to action to grow the Fine Arts Museums’ collection, enabling its mission to connect audiences with local and global art, was enthusiastically answered. The impressive number of gifts comprises both outright and promised gifts from private collections as well as gracious donations that allowed the Fine Arts Museums to nimbly acquire outstanding artworks on the market.

Diane B. Wilsey, chair emerita, generously funded the acquisition of Canaletto’s stunning Venice, the Grand Canal looking East with Santa Maria della Salute, before its planned auction at Christie's in 2022. This dazzling painting will be on view this spring at the de Young in the upcoming exhibition Monet and Venice.

Transformative to the substantial collection of works on paper held by the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts at the Fine Arts Museums, local collector Kirk Edward Long’s gift of 1,600 European Master prints is one of the largest single-owner donation of prints received by the Achenbach Foundation since its founding in 1948, and recharacterizes the Achenbach Foundation as a leading repository for European prints, particularly strong in its Mannerist holdings. The Long Collection, one of the largest of 16th century prints in the US, includes preeminent examples of early modern European printmaking from the regions of Italy, France, Germany, and the low countries. In addition, a selection of European paintings, decorative arts, and Roman antiquities were donated by Mr. Long.

Through the generosity of an anonymous benefactor the Achenbach Foundation received gifts or promised gifts of outstanding and transformative masterpieces on paper by Mary Cassatt, Jean-Antoine Watteau and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Another significant addition — Henri Matisse’s Jazz, the culmination of the artist’s graphic oeuvre — was underwritten by Margaret Hearst and her husband, former Acquisitions Committee Chair Will Hearst.

The Fine Arts Museums are grateful to donors who made the acquisition of significant works by women artists possible, allowing for a fuller and more inclusive narrative of European art history to be shared with museum visitors. These include paintings by Lavinia Fontana, Angelica Kauffman, and Marie-Guillemine Benoist, and works on paper by Elisabeth Louise Vigée‑LeBrun.

Notably, Gifts of Art was instrumental in growing the Fine Arts Museums’ newest curatorial department, contemporary art, which will celebrate its own landmark 10-year anniversary in 2026. Over the course of this campaign, the department was able to acquire 42 works by local contemporary artists thanks to a million-dollar gift from the Svane Family Foundation, affirming the Fine Arts Museums’ long-standing commitment to Bay Area artists.

Further, the campaign was distinguished by the donors who gave generously, directly from their own collections. Among this special group are Bernard and Barbro Osher, whose promised gift of sixty-one works by preeminent American artists, including Georgia O’Keeffe, Winslow Homer, and John Singer Sargent, have deepened the Fine Arts Museums’ representation of American art. Similarly, J. Alec Merriam, a former acquisitions committee member, and his wife, Gail, gave more than 140 works of ancestral Maya art to the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas department, making it one of the largest collections of ancient American art in the western United States.

To close out the Gifts of Art campaign, earlier this year, noted San Francisco gallerist John Berggruen generously promised his Frida Kahlo portrait of Mrs. Jean Wight to the collection. Painted by Kahlo while she was living in San Francisco, this resonant portrait will be the first painting by the celebrated artist to enter the Fine Arts Museums’ collection and will delight future generations of museum visitors.