Gap founder's amazing art collection may leave San Francisco
This week, I had reason to visit the San Francisco headquarters of The Gap. The company's founder, Donald Fisher, is a huge art lover and has a jaw-dropping collection of contemporary art. I really respect that he and his wife spend so much of their wealth on art, and want to share it with the public. The company lobby itself is like a Lichtenstein gallery. For example, the fantastic portrait of Swee'Pea seen above, titled "Reflections on the Scream," is hanging right in the entryway. And there are a slew of great pieces by Warhol, Calder, Oldenburg, and other modern Western artists throughout the building. For the last two years, the Fisher family had been aiming to build a public museum for their full collection in San Francisco's historic Presidio, a former military facility that's now a national park. Apparently though, historic preservationists and conservationists were upset with the Fishers' plans. Now it's not clear where their collection will go, and it may very well leave the city. From the Los Angeles Times:
"It would be an absolute crime if it left San Francisco," said Dede Wilsey, president of the board that oversees the De Young and Legion of Honor, two of the city's major art museums. "No one could amass that collection now. They couldn't afford it, even in a recession.""S.F. art community fears loss of Gap founder's massive collection"
The collection, housed in a warehouse and at Gap headquarters in San Francisco, is open to scholars, and Fisher routinely loans pieces to museums. But until an agreement is reached, most of it will stay behind closed doors.
"You could very easily teach the history of art over the past 50 years with this collection," said Hilarie Faberman, a curator at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University. Faberman said nearly every piece deserves to be displayed.
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Thank goodness they won't let him defile the old military base with his silly artwork - those folks in SF know what's important! (I've camped at the Presidio decades ago, and unless they did a lot of work, I don't think it's *that* special that it cna't tolerate a world-class art museum...)
Way to go, San Francisco! You've really managed to put the "Pro" in provincial.
On the upside, maybe the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford can get the collection and expand. That would be great!
Don't try to blame this on vague "preservationists". Fisher is a megalomaniac and his demands are incompatible with everybody. He wants the collection to remain intact and never be broken up. He wants his estate to retain complete control over the exhibition of the collection. And most importantly he wants to build his museum on national park land.
The Presidio offered him half a dozen alternate sites but he insisted on the main post. Other SF museums also expressed interest in the collection. But none of them could stomach Fisher's terms.
If Fisher was a proper collector and philanthropist he wouldn't need the government to give him a bunch of free land to build a temple to himself. He'd buy some land and hire an architect the way Hearst or Guggenheim did.
If they want to open a museum, that's great. But they need to be open about where the museum goes. Especially if they want to bulldoze a local business in the process.
Because I, for one, would rather have a nice bowling alley than a museum. That's not a trade off most of us are willing to make.
Know what else they own? Logging companies. Booooo.
The Fishers are responsible for clear cutting old growth forests in the Northwest. Their business practices at Gap are also bad. They are fond of sweatshop labour, cheap clothing, and trying to hide things from the media. I worked at Gap a few years ago and I had to sign many pieces of paper that forbade me from talking to the media as a Gap employee. Also no video or pictures were allowed to be taken in the store. Their clothing is soaked in formaldehyde to preserve it. Lots of stuff going on behind the scenes of Gap and it's not good.
As for their artwork...that's nice. It's easy to purchase all of that artwork when you're busy exploiting others - something the Fishers are very good at doing.
It's too bad he can't afford to buy his own real estate.
I'd love to see the collection displayed in SF, but not at the price that Fisher wanted to charge, which was to put up a big modern hey-look-at-me building at the top of the Presidio parade ground. While it's a lovely modern design, it's completely out of character for the Presidio, and Fisher insisted on the location and the style.
Contrast his design with what George Lucas did with the Letterman Digital Arts Center. The buildings are classy, and completely in character with the rest of the base. It looks like it's always been a part of the complex, and inside. it's utterly modern.
Had Fisher been willing to build something appropriate to the National Park that it would have been the most visible part of, it would have been a win all the way around.
Here's Nancy Pelosi in 1996, during her capitulation to the Republicans on the issue of privatizing the Presidio:
REP. NANCY PELOSI: In the law that exists and in the law that I am advocating we say that there cannot be one inch of additional development in the Presidio.
From a PBS interview. Yet another example of not being able to believe anything that comes out of that woman's mouth.
jwb,
A quick perusal of your comment history convinces me that you may be The Crankiest Person Alive.
Save the Presidio Bowl.
I'm afraid that the Fishers may be encouraging journalists to characterize the opposition to their plan in dismissive terms. With great respect, Pesco, this isn't the only point of view. No one disagrees that it would be wonderful for this great collection to find a permanent home in San Francisco. However, there was widespread opposition to their proposal, the details of which seems to have been non-negotiable, and it wasn't just a collection of "historic preservationists and conservationists" behind the pushback, it was a broad group of people from many walks of life who care very much for the Presidio and don't want to see more demolition, traffic and congestion.
I know SF is the world capital of subjectivity, and people get pretty strident about their personal opinions and pet causes. But this proposal raised real issues.
The Presidio, for those who haven't yet visited, is a huge chunk of San Francisco, a rare oasis of green space and historic buildings in the middle of this paved-over city. After being demilitarized in the 1980s, it became part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, the most-visited national park in the US. The historic buildings in the Presidio are home to a few companies and many organizations, including a bunch of foundations, nonprofits, media makers and the Internet Archive, on whose board I sit (naturally, I speak only for myself in this post). Last Monday my spouse and I took a lunch break and walked through the Presidio to Crissy Field, a historic early aviation landmark that's been replanted with 19 acres of grass just as it was in the 1910s and 1920s. We saw a peregrine falcon fending off attacks from a gull and a California sea lion getting its teeth around a fish far too big for its mouth.
This is a very special place. Unfortunately, the national park was organized during the Reagan era, when privatization was all the rage, and its charter dictated that it needed to be self-supporting by 2014. Because of this the Presidio Trust, a presidentially-appointed group, needed money. It rents out offices and apartments at "market" rates, and a few years ago negotiated a deal with Lucasfilm to build a digital production complex on the site of the old military hospital. Another reader might correct me, but I believe the Lucas buildings are mostly empty. They're bringing in rent, though. With very little publicity until recently, the Disney family has built a museum celebrating Walt's life. There are plans for a hotel/conference center. Lots of people feel the Presidio has reached the proverbial tipping point.
BB'ers, when you visit SF, spend a morning enjoying the Presidio (and dodging cars) and decide for yourself whether it needs more congestion. Also check out the other sites that were offered to the Fishers (like the Sports Basement site by the lagoon) which they declined.
--Rick
Supposedly the LDAC has 1500 employees.
I've rarely enjoyed a museum as much as I have enjoyed that bowling alley.
if don fisher really gave a crap about sharing his collection with the world he'd donate it to SFMOMA. or any other world class art museum with the resources to conserve and show the work.
but no, it's gotta be another museum, out in the sticks where there's inadequate public transportation, just for his art, that only shows his art all the time, etc. etc. etc. it's pure ego.
he's a rich guy. it's his art. he can have a temper tantrum and take the ball home if he wants to, but IMO it's an ethical imperative for the rest of us to resist being pushed into things by whiny rich egos like fisher's, no matter how many bloggers get private tours and then follow up with this kind of hype.
Antinous: normally I just enjoy the wonderful things without comment, but do feel compelled to chip in when the post is full or wrong, like this one, or when Mark posts one of those ridiculous works of fiction ripped from the pages of Reason Magazine.
@Rick - despite what you may think of as a broad coalition of people that opposed this, as an observer who lives in the area, reads the papers, the comments in them and has visited the Presidio on more than one occasion I have to disagree with you. It's very clear to me that the situation boils down to as, what one poster to the SFGate said "I don't want more traffic during my morning walk". Sorry, but that is exactly the attitude that is prevalent throughout the city that is the reason I live on the other side of the bay.
i find it tasteless that the GAP people are being covered by boing boing, logging sweatshops and other forms of corporate greed need not be shown any sort of respect and the sooner we ban such practices the better of the planet will be.
greed and exploitation should never be rewarded with coverage on boingboing
just a little nit to pick here. Contemporary art is art from oh, the last 25 years or so, the lichtenstein pictured is an example of modern art. It's an easy mistake to make, but modern does not equal contemporary, modernism was over with oh, 30-40 years ago.
JWB - sounds like he wants to follow in the footsteps of The Barnes Foundation near Philadelphia, a collection estimated to be worth $6BN:
From the Wikipedia Entry on the Barnes Foundation:
At one time, the art was kept in a famously under-sized building in a residential community due to requirements in the foundation's documents, but in recent years the trustees were able to relocate closer to Philadelphia, PA.
San Francisco must be most artless place in the world, judging by the number of museums which have threatened to leave the city at one point or another. This is a regular process of provocation, and I'm sorry to see Boingboing drawn into it.
Oddly I think this one was probably done in by Fisher's Pac Heights neighbors. They donate huge sums to the Democrats.
I've been following this saga since it started and I'm firmly in agreement with Firebus #15. Don Fisher is a whiner, which is one of the many afflictions money does not cure. Long story short: Fisher knows there is huge resistance from the public so he has to work the power play.
"...had reason to visit..." pfft.
@#17 --
That's very special for you. Thanks for sharing your informed personal preferences on the internet. The world is a better place because of you!
Anonymous #17: I note the distinction between "lives in the area" and "lives in San Francisco." There are undoubtedly a great number of people in the Bay Area who enjoy driving to, around, and in San Francisco, but it is the people who live in the city itself who absorb this externality. Their voices are important.
As an example take the new De Young and Academy of Science in Golden Gate Park. They traffic they are causing is incredible.
I appreciate those who weighed in with more info on this. (And Rick, you know I respect you and your insight into such matters.) I completely realize that it's more complicated than it may seem on the surface. In fact, I attempted to just summarize the article I linked to without taking a "side." If there's a side I'm on, it's the side of the art.
I worked as a temp for a week at the Gap headquarters. I was flabbergasted at the art on display there. Several of my personal favorite paintings by David Salle, Elizabeth Murray, Anselm Kiefer, etc. were just everywhere I turned. Best collection I ever saw.
The staff were oblivious, walking right past it all. I would try to start conversations about the work, and invariably prompted someone to turn their head and look directly at the piece I was marveling at for what was obviously the first time in their life. "Oh, yeah, that's very, um, nice."
Anyhow, hooray for art and to hell with philistines.
I'm living in SF too, and as others have mentioned above, the Presidio is in a lot of ways an oasis of green - it's one of the jewels of San Francisco BECAUSE it hasn't been over-developed. Several alternative locations in the same area were rejected for seemingly not much of a good reason, and there were too many concerns about traffic and the appearance of the proposed design.
Personally, the proposed design of the museum just didn't look good in any of the renderings I've seen. It looked alternatively cheap or blocky, nothing beautiful about it. All the renderings made it look like it doesn't belong into a heavily forested park with early 20th century architecture all around it.
"If there's a side I'm on it's the side of art."
I don't know what this even means. I am sure that even the bowling enthusiasts on here are on the side of art. As an art historian I am completely on the side of art.
That said, I have no idea why it is necessary to built a temple to one person's collection in a green area that is totally inaccessible to people who do not drive. The Legion of Honor is already a trek for people taking public transportation.
We constantly lament the hollowing-out of our city centers and the subsequent sprawl and the fact that we cannot just walk or take public transit to get places -- that we are not a more European city -- but as soon as someone has a bunch of Kiefers and Lichtensteins and wants to build a building in an inappropriate place we roll over and build in a place that no one, even art lovers, thinks is a good idea?
With the kind of money this collector has, I am sure that there are plenty of places *within* the city proper, along the BART line that would allow the public greater access to the art itself and not destroy natural areas. It is as if a collector only wanted to build a museum for his collection in Central Park.
If you are really on the side of art you want people to be able to experience it. Otherwise "being on the side of art" is just some adolescent abstract affectation that freshmen art majors often vocalize along with their beliefs in "authenticity" and "not selling out".
i had to idea he had such a love for art.
"It is as if a collector only wanted to build a museum for his collection in Central Park. "
Does Central Park have apartments, stores, commercial buildings, and a corporate campus with thousands of employees?
#30 No, but Central Park was also never used as a political pawn for Newt Gingrich to simultaneously indulge his love of privatization and give liberal San Francisco the finger, which is the reason the Presidio became the only National Park Service land to be run by a private corporation.
I attended a curated tour of the Fisher collection on display at the headquarters, which is apparently opened only rarely. It is a remarkable achievement, a deep and thorough collection of a comparatively limited number of artists, as opposed the broad but shallow collections of most museums. Not to suggest the Fishers' philosophy is better, but just to reiterate that it's a world-class collection that would lend a lasting cachet to whatever city houses it.
I'm sorry to read that the Fishers engage in contemptible business practices, and the Fisher has been inflexible -- though I understand he has already sunk a lot of money into the planning.
When the Met was built in Central Park, it was considered ridiculously far away, but SF doesn't have that luxury. The Getty Center managed to include a tram-only access -- perhaps there are other solutions.
In the end San Franciscans will get the city they deserve. World-class cultural sites attract the kind of people -- and resulting businesses and jobs -- that enable a city to thrive. If enough of the population considers the current art offerings sufficient, and bowling alleys, open space, and ball parks adequate substitutes, that will send an important signal.
San Francisco, with 800K residents, has Golden Gate Park (1,017 acres), McLaren Park (317 acres) and some 230 other parks, in addition to the Presidio (1,480 acres), Ocean Beach, Land's End, easy access to the Marin Headlands. For size comparison, Central Park occupies 843 acres.
Greenery is nice, but it's not the only factor in deciding what amenities belong in a city. If you want wilderness, move to Idaho.
If you want a monument to a predator, I suggest that you move elsewhere.
Fisher isn't doing this as a gift to the city. He wants a garish monument in an inappropriate place, and if he can't have it his way, fuck us.
I live four blocks from the Presidio, and have been following this from the beginning. Fisher is just another rich asshole attempting to use his money to aggrandize himself. The top of the parade ground is not the place for a modern building, and he won't even consider anyplace else. So he's attempting to blackmail SF by threatening to take his toys and not let us play with them.
Someone above mentioned the park improvements at Crissy Field, and I agree that they are a great example of how to use the park without destroying it. My impression of Fisher is that he's not at all interested in the park, the city of San Francisco, or you. He's interested in the greater glory of Don Fisher and damn whomever won't play along.
I also live in SF. This isn't really a question of green space. The Presidio is already pretty well developed, and the museum was supposed to go in the middle of a number of other buildings. It's more a question of preserving the parade ground in the center of two rows of Spanish(?- I'm no architectural critic, though I know what I like) buildings. I think it was a bad place to put it. Yes, I like modern art and architecture, but putting it into the middle of a neat, well-preserved, cohesive set of buildings of a different era is pretty blah, especially considering the many alternatives that exist. Personally I like the idea of putting it down on Chrissy field, replacing the old warehouses that are there now.
As a former slave of Gap, I can safely say that this guy is one of the most cruelest dictators that I have had the bad luck to meet in my entire life.
After San Francisco introduced a city ordinance requiring employees with 30 hours or more a week to have free employer health insurance, the Gap subsequently cut employee hours to 29 or less. That's just one of many atrocities. There were regular protests outside the store the entire (short) time I worked there.
His lameness was further emphasized when he attempted to force out a small local business for his 'museum' space. The Presidio neighborhood is very unique, quite unlike anywhere else I've ever been, and Fisher would have changed the neighborhood dramatically, and negatively.
Just because someone has good taste in art doesn't give them much credit in the 'acting like a decent human being', department. Example: Hannibal Lecter.
I've got no dog in this fight, but I'm thrilled to see a cameo by Dede Wilsey, so wonderfully covered in Oh the Glory of It All.
You don't have to have good taste in art to acquire an impressive collection; you have to have good taste in curators.
Fisher's taking his case to the media because he didn't get way. That's his prerogative, of course. But using socialite Dede Wilsey to make his threat; those Pac Heights folks stick together. When the swells say art community it isn't quite what young artists think about when they hear "art community."
The Getty or the Crocker? I think it's a bit too shlocky for anywhere else.
So this is why we pay so much extra for jeans and T-shirts? The Gap also owns Old Navy and used to own Bannana Republic too. They may have nice SF offices, but I'm pretty sure most every store is a registered Delaware Corporation.
While yet another museum would be nice, the community isn't exactly suffering for a lack of museums.
A lack of affordable day care, or community centers where kids could go after school and with activities for seniors, yes. A shortage of homeless shelters, a shortage of jobs for people who have been out of work for some time, yes. A shortage of medical clinics giving free or cheap care to people in poor neighborhoods, definitely. A shortage of school supplies in most schools, a shortage of fresh produce available in places like Bayview, and others can no doubt come up with more shortages.
A shame Fisher can't donate some of those many millions of dollars to something that would impact the lives of tens of thousands of ordinary San Franciscans.
But hey, why not collect a massive art collection as a hobby, then donate the whole thing for an equally massive tax write off, while feeding your ego on a, well, massive scale. Show everyone your exquisite taste and make sure your name is associated with your fine sensibilities as a collector. Heck, makes you look much more important that someone who merely funds subsidized, quality child care for working families. You know, like the ones who bought so much Gap stuff they made Fisher's fortune.
San Francisco is already a jewel of culture, art, and tourist-worthy spectacle. Let this collection go to some dusty, culturally impoverished town that doesn't already have several amazing museums, along with a world class aquarium, zoo, a park with numerous marvels, and a vibrant community of artists.
In other words, send it to San Jose.
"It would be an absolute crime if it left San Francisco," said Dede Wilsey
Ummm... why? And, I say this as a San Fransisco Bay Area resident who is a big fan of Lichtenstein, Warhol, Calder, Oldenburg, Salle, Murray, Keifer, etc.
It would be an "absolute crime" if the works were destroyed, in fit of Gap clothing-inspired insane rage.
It would be a crime (perhaps?) if the collection was broken up and sold to individual private collectors.
Looked at dispassionately though, perhaps this collection's natural home is on the East Coast, in New York? Most of these artists were from there.
Tremendous Thanks to the Boing Boing commenters for filling this story out, especially Footage (Rick) #12 and Secret Life of Plants #28.
I agree with Anonymouse@19 regarding this collection sounding like Modern art, not Contemporary art.
The timeline Anonymous presents (i.e., Contemporary art is from the last 25 years or so [actually I'd make that the last 40] and Modernism ended 30-40 years ago) is a bit misleading, though. It encourages the idea that Modernism and Contemporary are time frames rather than art movements. There are, of course, folks who still make Modern-style art (and architecture, etc.) today, so Modernism can't really be said to be over--it's just not where the excitement is coming from.
"It would be an absolute crime if it left San Francisco," said Dede Wilsey"
Talk about missing the point. Nothing's stopping Fisher from building a fine museum somewhere in the city. If he wants to house his ill-gotten acquisitions in the city, he can.
That's not what he wants. What he wants is to have THE FISHER COLLECTION in a garish building in the most prominent part of a national park
@ANTINOUS Central Park is not the only park in NYC
It was a reference for scale, as I clearly and explicitly stated.
Anyone remember when The Gap funded anti-preschool measures?
http://www.sfbg.com/entry.php?catid=4&entry_id=260
There's something seriously fucked about this company. Just because you're rich doesn't mean compassion for your fellow man should go out the window.
I wonder what the artists who made these fine works would have thought about the asshole who now owns them?
Donald Fischer is a complete asshole who's wealth (that is the wealth that bought all that fancy art) comes from the twin barrels of the Gap's sweatshops and the Fischer family's clear cut logging operations.
I don't want his museum in the Presidio, and I don't even live in SF. That's my national park too, and no place to glorify the compilation of his excessive wealth on the backs of the poor and the environment. I don't care if his wealth takes the form of modern art or a Scrooge McDuck money bin, I don't want to be supporting it.
Hmm.
SO much to respond to.
I like art.
I also bowl. In the Presidio.
I walk there, and I bike there. At times I've even worked there. I would love a chance to have this museum in the city - I just don't think it belongs on the damn parade ground. The Presidio is a fragile island of peaceful green, with concrete and development stretching out in all directions. Leave it alone.
also, #13 - on a comically tragic note, the architects of the Letterman center planned restrooms for 1500 people, with the generally accepted 50/50 allotment between the sexes. Sadly, the fact that VFX companies are 80% male seems to have escaped their notice. This may have indirectly led to the infamous fifth floor 'poop incident' - we'll never be sure.
Beautiful park, though.
i forgot what I was talking about.
As another San Francisco resident, let me chime in to say that this is pure BS. I'm all for another art museum, but not at the expense of parkland. The de Young already more than used up this decade's quota of that.
And Antinous, I really resent the suggestion that somehow it has not occurred to the locals that we have a lot of parkland, or that we're somehow anti-development. But we have a lot more non-parkland, and aside from Fisher's vanity, there's no reason this museum can't go in SOMA.
I live in San Francisco and I am also "on the side of art".
We have plenty of space in San Francisco for a new art museum (or to add Fisher's collection to the existing SFMOMA). No one has explained why it had to be in a national park instead of the easily accessible south of Market area or even near the Gap headquarters (lots of available space there).
Also, the Fishers don't just "want to share it with the public" - they want to maintain control of their collection while taking massive tax write-offs while saving nearly a million dollars a year they currently spend on storage: http://www.sfweekly.com/2007-12-26/news/portrait-of-a-capitalist/
In San Francisco we have world class cultural institutions and large beautiful parks. We do not have to choose between the two, even if a rich man tells us to.
#22 POSTED BY EH, AUGUST 7, 2009 7:52 PM:
"...had reason to visit..." pfft.
I was curious about the same thing:
What was your reason for visiting?
#8 slideguy:
You say the Letterman Arts center buildings are "classy" -- are you kidding? First off, great architecture is never described as 'classy', though the Letterman is far from great -- rather, its a ridiculously hackneyed 'fake old' pile of over-scaled bungalows on steroids. Architectural mimicry, and mediocrity at best.
Parade Grounds schmarade grounds!
The argument that contemporary buildings can't fit with old ones is provincial-minded, NIMBY bullcrap, spouted by knee-jerk oppositionist types basically afraid of the new. Europe has almost too many examples to count of great new contemporary tour-de-force level architecture coexisting side-by-side with far more substantial historical buildings than the Presidio's brick and wood shacks/barracks (e.g. see Herzog & DeMeuron's recent Caixa Forum in Madrid).
SF needs to grow up and smell the modern architecture, or be left behind as a frozen-in-time theme park 'city' of the past...
First off, great architecture is never described as 'classy',
The Chrysler Building *is* CLASSY.
:P
It doesn't have anything to do with architecture. It has everything to do with giving away national park land to private interests.
What Ever Happened to that Glorious "Eat the Rich" Attitude Of My Lost Youth. (pre-appropriation by P.J. O'Rourke)
I am a little baffled by the side the boingboing crew is taking here. I generally agree with much of what is posted by BBers. But this is like supporting a bully who won't share his toys unless he gets his way? How is *that* being a good citizen? Do you really want the toys so much that you are willing to let the bully boss you around? It's capitulating on points like that throughout history that have landed us in the mess we're in.
I think it is also funny that the article says that if they can't get the Presidio land, they might have to consider - wait for it - Oakland !! What a loss for the Bay Area !!
The art's cool, but Fisher is no philanthropist. The Gap's homogenized look has squashed local apparel innovations. Open the gallery in SE Asia where the under-paid labor force of the Gap lives. Heck, scatter it on the store wall nation wide. Open your own ding-dang museum in "not San Francisco." Stop being a spoiled rich princess just because people won't acquiesce to your demands that a public historical spot be converted into an altar for your (admittedly good) taste in pop art.
Oh, no, San Fran won't have another great art gallery. Whatever shall the city do? I suppose the maddening yuppies who can afford to live there will have to just tolerate having all the other great arty things the city offers. Oh, horror. Oh, strife!
So Fisher wants his unmodifiable collection on public property, to collect all the ticket revenue (with a murky tax structure given the Presidio Trust's ownership), in irreverant architecture that still misses the delightful contemporary art potential of including a bowling alley? That's a whole lot of take from the public's commonwealth, what do we get in return?
"SF needs to grow up and smell the modern architecture, or be left behind as a frozen-in-time theme park 'city' of the past..."
Not really. Sorry if you're feeling inadequate, but I think it's a damned nice place to live. I've been here for forty years and have done just fine without Mr. Fisher's attempt at immortality.
And I approve of most of the Presidio Trust's improvements. If Fisher takes his ball and plays elsewhere, Most of us won't miss what we never had.
Today is my day off. My wife and I will spend some time walking at Crissy Field. We'll watch the indoor rock climbers, check out the Goldsworthy wannabes at the beach by the Warming Hut, and wind up in our beach chairs, reading at our shady spot that overlooks the Gate. I may even bring my banjo and annoy the wildlife.
We'll do just fine without Mr. Fisher's monstrosity and "generosity.
Citicritter: The Center Pompidou in Paris is a good example of a great museum housed in a 'modern' structure. At its completion, it was hailed as the seminal 'high-tech' structure. Perhaps. But in context, it remains a fart in a city that is otherwise fragrant in its design character. Ironically, the views of Paris from the Pompidou are wonderful, while simultaneously illustrating how out of place it is. Not every modern building is a work of Howard Roark.
Dede should pay for it.
San Francisco put a great deal of effort, lo these past two decades, into putting most of our museums downtown near Civic Center and in the Yerba Buena area; it worked great. Near transit, tourist hotels, the cable cars and all the rest.
Fisher spent half a dozen years and millions of dollars trying to create a monument to himself in an out-of-the way location. Fuck that. And imho, modern art is often little more than New York signified tripe.
The sky did not fall: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/09/25/MNVC19S49B.DTL