The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (FAMSF), which includes the de Young and the Legion of Honor, has received a gift of 1,600 works from local collector Kirk Edward Long.
The donated works will be stewarded by FAMSF’s Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, and the donation marks one of the largest single-owner gifts in the foundation’s history. Long’s holdings are particularly strong in early modern European prints from Italy, France, Germany, and the Netherlands.
His collection also includes paintings, antiquities, and decorative arts, some of which he also donated to FAMSF, including a 19th-century painting by Gustave Moreau and a 19th-century bust by Charles-Henri-Joseph Cordier.
The Long gift is part of FAMSF’s larger multiyear “Gifts of Art,” which began in 2022 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the merger of the de Young and the Legion of Honor to create FAMSF in 1972, as well as the 100th anniversary of the Legion of Honor in 2024. In total, the museum has added 2,000 works by 275 donors across all of the museum’s collecting departments.
Other gifts that have entered the FAMSF collection via the campaign include paintings by Canaletto, Angelica Kauffmann, Georgia O’Keeffe, John Singer Sargent, Camille Pissarro, and Marie-Guillemine Benoist, as well as drawings by Elisabeth Louise Vigée‑LeBrun, Mary Cassatt, and Henri Matisse. Contemporary works have also been added to the holdings, such as pieces by Ruby Neri, Rashaad Newsome, and Maria Guzmán Capron.
In a statement, FAMSF director and CEO Thomas P. Campbell said, “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. 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.”
See images below of works donated to FAMSF by Kirk Edward Long and other donors as part of the “Gifts of Art” campaign.
