Snow Flower And The Secret Fan--A Forthcoming Movie written by novelist, Lisa See

Novelist Lisa See gave a talk in the Haggin Gallery last year. Now she has written a book which is being produced into a movie to be introduced later.

Click on the orange-colored sentence above to view slides of the upcoming film. This "sharing" link was provided by Fox-Searchlight Pictures. The film will debut this year on July 15th.

The Panda Movie--The Art Buried Within

Movie trailers for this panda movie, "Kung Fu Panda" belie the fact that interesting illustrations, apparently for the children age group are buried deep within this computer-animated film. Just as the children's Fairy-Tale Art, now on display in the Lower West Gallery demonstrates, the images serve to propel the imagination of the children storybook readers, and in this case, propelling even the minds of adults. [Source: New York Times Arts and Leisure section from Sunday May 29]

Matisse, Picasso and The Parisian Avant-Garde May21--Sep 6

At the SF Museum of Modern Art:

American expatriates in bohemian Paris when the 20th century was young, the Steins — writer Gertrude, her brothers Leo and Michael, and Michael's wife, Sarah — were among the first to recognize the talents of avant-garde painters like Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso. Through their friendship and patronage, they helped spark an artistic revolution. This landmark exhibition draws on collections around the world to reunite the Steins' unparalleled holdings of modern art, bringing together, for the first time in a generation, dozens of works by Matisse, Picasso, Paul Cézanne, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and many others.

Source: http://www.sfmoma.org/exhibitions/410#ixzz1NfNiP6A6
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

[TOP] Henri Matisse, Femme au chapeau (Woman with a Hat), 1905; oil on canvas;

[ABOVE RIGHT] Henri Matisse, Blue Nude: Memory of Biskra, 1907; The Baltimore Museum of Art: The Cone Collection

[LEFT] Pablo Picasso, Head in Three-Quarter View, 1907; gouache and watercolor on paper; Collection SFMOMA, bequest of Elise S. Haas; © 2011 Estate of Pablo Picasso

[BELOW] Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, In the Salon: The Divan, ca. 1892-93; Collection MASP, Museu de Arte de São Paulo

Another Kind of Forest Monarch

The last California grizzly bear to live in San Francisco stands inside a tinted glass case at the California Academy of Sciences, a tragic reminder of a species that humans extinguished.

The dark brown bear named Monarch was captured in 1889 in a publicity stunt concocted by newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst and kept for 22 years in a cage. California's last captive grizzly, whose image is on the state flag, died 100 years ago this month in Golden Gate Park.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/05/02/MN711J9AFN.DTL#ixzz1NaBs7WM9



The California Grizzly Bear was not the type of animal to back down when approached by early California settlers, even though those settlers were armed.

SFMOMA Moves Ahead With Planned Expansion

San Francisco -- The details are sketchy, but the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has released its design concept for a new wing that would double the size of the institution - a concept that aims to slide a block-long building into the landscape without causing a fuss.

The expansion would stretch from Howard Street north to Minna Street behind the museum's existing home, a length of 335 feet. The top height of 195 feet along Howard compares with the 163-foot peak of SFMOMA's distinctive granite-rimmed skylight.

But instead of a solid block, the architects envision something more like a weathered cliff that folds in on all sides to lessen the impact on views and not shade the museum's popular sculpture garden.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/05/25/BA2A1JKEQ6.DTL#ixzz1Na9Mc62t

Looking Up The Yosemite Valley--From a different spot

- On a bright Saturday morning in September a young man is clinging to the face of Half Dome, a sheer 2,130-foot wall of granite in the heart of Yosemite Valley. He's alone, so high off the ground that perhaps only the eagles take notice.
- Hanging on by his fingertips to an edge of rock as thin as a dime, shoes smeared on mere ripples in the rock, Eminem blasting on his iPod, Alex Honnold is attempting something no one has ever tried before: to climb the Regular Northwest Face route on Half Dome without a rope. He's less than a hundred feet from the summit when something potentially disastrous occurs---he loses the smallest measure of confidence.
- For two hours and 45 minutes Honnold has been in the zone, flawlessly performing hundreds of precise athletic moves one after another, and not once has he hesitated. In the sport of free soloing, which means climbing with only a powdery chalk bag and rock shoes---no rope, no gear, nothing to keep you stuck to the stone but your own belief and ability---doubt is dangerous. If Honnold's fingertips can't hold, he will fall to his death. Now, the spell suddenly broken by mental fatigue and the glass-slick slab in front of him, he's paralyzed.
- "My foot will never stay on that," Honnold says to himself, staring at a greasy bump on the rock face. "Oh God, I'm screwed."
- Now, clinging to the granite, Honnold vacillates, delicately chalking one hand, then the other, vigilantly adjusting his feet on invisibly small footholds. Then, abruptly he's in motion again, stepping up, smearing his shoe on the slick knob, crimping his fingers on the tiny edge. Within minutes he's at the top.
- "I rallied because there was nothing else I could do," Honnold tells later, releasing a boyish laugh. "I stepped up and trusted that terrible foothold and was freed of the little prison where I'd stood silently for five minutes."
- Word of his two-hour-and-50-minute free solo of Half Dome flashes around the world. Climbers are stunned, and bloggers buzz. On this warm fall day in 2008 the nerdy, plays-Scrabble-with-his-mom 23-year old from the suburbs of Sacramento has just set a new record in climbing's biggest of big leagues. --[Images from May 2011 National Geographic by Jimmy Chin, text by Mark Jenkins. 1st photo by Mikey Schaefer]

Docents at Lakeside in Spring

- On April 27th, a docents field trip saw dozens of Haggin Museum docents travel to Lodi Lake to walk in the Nature Area, see the Visitor Center and ride a pontoon boat out to the Mokelumne River confluence and back. Our exploration uncovered the under-appreciated nature walking areas, springtime vegetation and wildlife that inhabits this preserve. The nature trail offers surprising views around every bend in the trail, including majestic oaks, turtles sunning themselves on a log, swooping birds and tantalizing fishing spots. The croaking of frogs is heard everywhere. It is an ideal place for family picnics that can include these activities and boat rentals as well. Well appointed picnic pavilions are available for reservation to allow barbecuing and eating by the lakeside views. Take the excursion sometime!

More Storybook Illustration

"THE ARRIVAL" An international best seller, Shaun Tan's wordless story tells of an immigrant who leaves the Old Country for a dreamlike metropolis.


Shaun Tan, the illustrator here, recently won an Oscar as co-director of "The Lost Thing" a short animated film based on one of his picture books. In it, a young man collecting bottle caps at the beach befriends a tentacled beast with a bright red metal shell and tries to find a home for it in a cheerless city where people ignore such anomalies. Repeatedly, Tan's protagonists seem like lonely characters who manage to see things in the world that others ignore. He wrote "The Red Tree" about a solitary girl who endures crushing tableaus only to find happiness later in the red tree that has begun to grow at her home.
- Tan arrived in a big way this year, when he received the Astrid Lindgren Memoral Award, a prize of $765,000 for children's illustration, in addition to his past honors including the Hugo and World Fantasy awards.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/24/magazine/mag-24Tan-t.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Shuan%20Tan&st=cse