Update: I made a Flickr Album for photos from this trip.
Had a really good first day of meetings. We had a quick lunch on the 36th floor of the Grand Hyatt, overlooking the awesome skyline of San Francisco. Then we got into the recap of the last 2 years, and touched base.
Then, we packed into a bunch of cars, and headed over to the De Young Museum in Golden Gate Park. What a cool museum! We headed straight for the Education Tower, with a spectacular view of The City - from an angle I'd never seen before.
We then proceeded with a tour through the Education Tower offices, and got a brief introduction to their education resources collection. Wow. They've put together a series of excellent binders for K-12 (well, 4-9 now, K-12 in January) art education. And they're providing it free to any teacher. This is some high end stuff, so if you are looking to integrate art into your classroom, give them a shout!
After the tour, we were unleashed into the galleries. We spent most of our time in The Jolika Collection of New Guinea Art - very interesting pieces. And the collection wasn't just dropped into the gallery - it feels like the rooms were designed completely around and for the collection, providing an immersive and compelling experience.
As we moved through to the next gallery, the fire alarm sounded. Emergency doors slid down over every doorway and window. Metal rollers. I was expecting Halon gas to fill the gallery to protect the art, but apparently it was a false alarm. Thankfully so, since the security staff simply herded us into a group on the second floor and left us there with no apparent way to get out. We eventually were led downstairs and out of the building...
We ended the evening at Maya (2nd and Harrison) with a private dining room for the rowdy pachyderms. Some really good food (of course), and fun conversation with the folks on the project. We were also introduced to the new Pachyderm mascots - the iPachyderm. It plugs into an audio source (iPod, computer, whatever) and bops along dancing and barking and blinking and sitting and beeping and wagging and...
