If you think you loved the David Hockney exhibition held at the de Young Museum in late 2013, consider its effect on the local co-curator of the show, Richard Benefield. Benefield has served in several key roles at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (the de Young umbrella institution) in his four years there, including two stints as acting director. Now, it has been announced he will begin a new job in January — as executive director of the David Hockney Foundation. “I’m over the moon,” he said by phone.
Benefield was the first director of San Francisco’s Walt Disney Family Museum, a position he held from 2008 to 2011. Earlier, he held administrative positions at the art museums of Brown University, the Rhode Island School of Design and Harvard University. He and his husband, John Kunowski, will move to Los Angeles, where the foundation is headquartered and where Hockney lives.
In 2014 the David Hockney Foundation reported assets — primarily works of art — valued at more than $136 million. The purpose of the foundation, Benefield said, is “to further educate the public on arts and culture.” It does this primarily through support of Hockney projects — he has four major exhibitions scheduled in the coming year, as he turns 80. A new book, “A History of Pictures: From the Cave to the Computer,” written with British art critic Martin Gayford, is launching Oct. 6.
The Independent newspaper reported that in 2012 Hockney was “the most generous philanthropist” in Britain. As it has been in the past, San Francisco will likely again be a beneficiary of that largess: on Tuesday, Oct. 4, the aquisitions committee of the FAMSF voted to recommend that the full board accept a gift from the foundation of two multi-screen video works, “Seven Yorkshire Landscapes, 2011” (which has been on view in the de Young lobby since the show in 2013) and “The Four Seasons, Woldgate Woods (Spring 2011, Summer 2010, Autumn 2010, Winter 2010).”
Charles Desmarais is The San Francisco Chronicle’s art critic. Email: cdesmarais@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Artguy1
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