The interiors of San Francisco's Asian Art Museum (asianart.org) as adapted by the brilliant architect Gae Aulenti, are delightful and soothing, and evoke a very different mood from when the building served as the City's Main Library (which is now in a newer building across the street). It's a brilliant adaptation, and while surrounded by ancient works from across the Pacific, feels a world apart from the City that surrounds it, while engaging with it in interesting ways (in the entrance; in the cafe and on its patio; and especially in the escalator corridor, where the balcony at the top protrudes beyond the building and over the harsh urban streets).
One of the interior elements that especially impresses me is the staging: the choices made for the backdrops of the art. Different regions have different colors, but those colors!! They are colors that make me want to mix new greens from all of my various watercolors (but especially the antique Japanese set). They don't distract, but I really do love them.
