The Box of Shadows

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But however beautiful the outlook from the tower, the most interesting sight lines are the ones inside. The de Young collections divide roughly into two parts. One is a significant assembly of art from Africa, Mesoamerica and the Pacific Islands. For those works, which include many freestanding carved figures, the architects have devised a series of long, curvaceous, wood-paneled galleries with tall glass vitrines, an enchanted forest of gods and fetishes. Just one of the smart pleasures of the design is that as you turn from there toward the Early American art, the view opens onto a long, straight enfilade of rooms, a smart transition from the non-Western to the Western world and one of the most inviting processions of gallery rooms anywhere in the U.S. Is there such a thing as voluptuous intelligence? Sure there is. You can smell it a mile away.

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