The de Young Is... De-lovely

摘要

If you go to the top of the tower that rises out of San Francisco's stunning new de Young Museum, you can see for miles. You can see the Marin headlands and the downtown high-rises; on a clear day you can see the Pacific. You can look down, too, onto the main part of the museum itself and see the ingenious design of the long, low-slung structure— with wedges sliced deep into its oblong shape to let daylight penetrate—and notice how the shimmery copper that wraps the exterior even covers the roof. If museums are today's cathedrals, this tower is the de Young's campanile—though in the hands of the edgy Swiss architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, it comes with a twist. And the tower's been a lightning rod: some local critics complain that, among other things, it looms too high over the trees surrounding the museum in Golden Gate Park.