Formerly known as the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, and built in commemoration of Californians who gave their lives in WWI, the French neoclassical Beaux-arts building overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge houses a collection of 4,000 years of ancient and European art.
Collections include Rodin's Thinker, housed below the museum's distinctive pyramid skylight and surrounded by six additional galleries. The collection also focuses on European decorative arts and paintings, Ancient art, and a large collection of prints and drawings.
The museum guide, Legion of Honor: Selected Works--Legion of Honor, is a useful handbook of this major regional collection of European art. It contains full color reproductions on glossy stock with brief, but scholarly entries. It opens with a very short history of the museum including some images to serve to prepare or as a reminder of one's visit.
Images record the sudden transformation of a modern American metropolis
60 paintings plus works on paper and cloisonné enamels reveal 19th-century society