When Gap founder Donald Fisher's plans to build a museum in the Presidio were stopped, he threatened to take his art somewhere else. There was much anguish and finger pointing at the potential loss of this collection to SF. There were many accusations of NIMBY-ism toward the members of the public and the Presidio Trust who bought up the many justified issues around placing a huge museum in a public park. But today's announcement shows that cooler heads have prevailed. As many pointed out at the time, SFMOMA was the logical place for this collection and today, Board Chair Charles Schwab and Director Neal Benezra today announced that the collection will find a home at SFMOMA. The Fisher Collection includes some 1,100 pieces and includes works by Alexander Calder, Chuck Close, Willem de Kooning, Richard Diebenkorn, Anselm Kiefer, Ellsworth Kelly, Roy Lichtenstein, Brice Marden, Agnes Martin, Gerhard Richter, Richard Serra, Cy Twombly, and Andy Warhol, among many others.
"San Francisco is where we raised our family and opened our first Gap store, and we want to give back to the city we love by sharing the art that means so much to us," said Don Fisher. "Doris and I share a vision with SFMOMA to enhance its collections and programs, and we are prepared to make a substantial gift to strengthen the museum's standing as one of the world's great contemporary art museums."
"SFMOMA is thrilled to forge this groundbreaking partnership and bring the Fishers' outstanding collection to the people of San Francisco and the world, which will make the museum an even greater public resource and provide visitors with a deeper, fuller view of key contemporary artists and movements," said Benezra. "The Fishers' collection is a perfect complement to SFMOMA's already strong holdings of artists like Gerhard Richter, Andy Warhol, and Philip Guston, and gives us new strength in our representation of major figures like Alexander Calder, Anselm Kiefer, Richard Serra, and Chuck Close."
Upon completion of SFMOMA's planned expansion, works from the Fisher Collection will be on display in a new wing that will also incorporate art from the museum's collection. In addition, works from the Fisher Collection will be interwoven with SFMOMA's modern and contemporary holdings in existing galleries. Together, they will form one of the world's most important collections of art of the past 50 years. The Fishers will create a trust, administered in collaboration with SFMOMA, to oversee the care of their collection at the museum for a minimum of 25 years.
Relocating administrative support space from the museum to a new wing will provide SFMOMA with more than 13,000 square feet of new gallery and public space in its current building, while consolidating all staff offices to one on-site location. In addition, the expansion will include a new entry on Minna Street (which runs along the museum's northern facade) to improve access for school groups and for visitors to the museum's Phyllis Wattis Theater for public programming.
The proposed new wing at SFMOMA presents an ideal location for the Fisher Collection, one where it will be seen by the hundreds of thousands of people who visit the museum annually. In addition, SFMOMA is conveniently accessible to public transportation and parking as well as hotels, restaurants, and other cultural institutions in downtown San Francisco. The collaboration also minimizes the environmental impact and diffusion of resources that would result from building a new, separate institution.
E-mail Nancy Ewart at namastenancy@hotmail.com
Comments