[3] The presence of painter-photographer George Henry Burgess among the founders connected the association with the nascent field of fine art photography.
[4] Within a few months, SFAA had elected its first honorary member: Albert Bierstadt, the financially successful landscape painter from New York who was at that time sojourning in California.
[2] In 1874, there were similar public art institutions in only three other United States cities: New York, Boston, and Washington, D.C.[2] From the beginning of the Bohemian Club in 1872, a web of interconnections between it and SFAA was apparent.
SFAA exhibits in the late 19th century were very successful—many of the participating artists sold a year's worth of production to wealthy Bohemian and society patrons.
Subsequent directors included: Emil Carlsen (1887–1889), Arthur Mathews (1890–1906), Robert Howe Fletcher (1907–1915), Pedro Joseph de Lemos (1914–1917), Lee Fritz Randolph (1917–1941), and William Alexander Gaw (1941–1945).
During his tenure as Director Pedro de Lemos, an award-winning printmaker, pastelist, and leader of the American Arts & Crafts Movement, created the Departments of Illustration as well as Decorative Design, and introduced the first courses in etching west of Chicago.
He resigned after a long dispute with the Board of Directors, which rejected his recommendations for increased faculty salaries, student-teaching grants, building maintenance, and additional painting and life classes.
In 1941 the celebrated modernist painter William Gaw proved an adept administrator who maintained enrollment by revising the curriculum during World War II.
[8] Afterward, the exposition organizers decided to give the Palace of Fine Arts to SFAA if $30,000 in operating expenses could be raised by May 1, 1916.
A shift in focus occurred in which traditional patronage practices came to the fore—the aesthetic wishes of the corporate class began to affect the artists' choices in subject matter and style.
After much fundraising and a bond measure, the San Francisco Museum of Art reopened in the War Memorial Veterans Building in the Civic Center in January 1935.