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by Chris Jones
Ah, what a shame. Don Fisher, founder of Geranimals for adults clothing chain, The Gap, has decided to take his fancy looking modern art collection and go home. Readers may recall that plans to build a museum at the site of the Presidio's Main Post bowling alley in which to house the Fisher art collection have generated quite a lot of controversy from locals, not to mention the National Park Service. The entire Main Post is an historic landmark, built in a variety of architectural styles that can be seen at basically every military base up and down the West Coast. Unfortunately, it was the opinion of many that Fisher's flashy looking museum complete with giant ass metal sculptures, simply wouldn't be a good fit for the neighborhood. Even Supervisor Michaela Alioto-Pier, in whose district the Presidio is located, complained that the modern art loving throngs might cause significant impacts to traffic as they descend like locusts upon the new museum in a desperate search for "cultcha." Apparently, Alioto-Pier is back pedaling now, because, like, losing a whole museum out of one's district? Doh!
For what it's worth, Fisher has not given up on founding a museum and has announced that he and his wife, Doris, are perhaps interested in looking for sites outside San Francisco to house their art collection. Hrmmmmm. Looks like the Fishers may be trying to steal a page from the York Family playbook, owners of the soon to be Santa Clara 49ers. Perhaps the city should offer the Fisher's the site in Hunter's Point that Jed York laughed at before taking his football team and heading south. That way the Fisher art collection gets to stay in town and everyone can be happy. Really, the Don and Doris Fisher Modern Art Museum of Daly City just seems to lack a certain cachet, no?
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Good.
They can now do what everyone else has to do when they want to build a big ass building: buy some land, get the permits, and build it. Maybe they can do this in SF, or maybe not, but it's really not our problem now.
Yay!! Now we get to have a busted parking lot to look at for the next couple decades! Weeee!
Or they could just keep the bowling alley.
The museum would have taken out the massive parking lot that is right in the middle of everything and the freakin bowling alley. I think the parking lot has historical significance though, so don't touch it. Maybe General MacArthur parked his caddy there once.
The parking lot -> lawn is not part of the Fisher proposal. read a newspaper.
No joshb, you read a newspaper.
from the sfgate article.
"Besides building a 100,000-square-foot museum - much of it underground - the family had offered to contribute $10 million to the transformation of the Main Post's parking lot into a landscaped "parade ground."
FUCK. YES.
And what a crybaby, right? Looking for places outside of SF? Fine, he can write the script himself that the docents will use at his museum, describing why a lifelong San Francisco presence chose to build his namesake museum in Hayward.
What I don't understand is why SF, a city so normally tepid on all things marshall, is so keen on all this old, historically insignificant, military stuff in the Presidio. Gun emplacements, marching squares, barracks, ugh. Leave a couple of the old gun emplacements, certainly the old Spanish made cannons (way cool), and a couple of the nicer old buildings and do something peaceful, like a museum, with the balance.
I think the problem is more with the style of building it is. This thing looks like it belongs in SOMA, not in the Presidio. If he cares to redesign it in a Spanish Revival style, I'm sure people would not be as opposed to it. But as it is, this thing looks so bizarre and out of place for the Presidio.
I agree. If he'd done what others in the Presidio have already done, and make the building work in context with the area, I would have been fine with it. That modern white monstrosity would look out of place with the surrounding architecture.
And Fisher comes off as a whining baby, taking his jacks and going home, which makes me even less sympathetic to his plight of having a multimillion dollar art collection (paid for on the backs of child laborers) and no where to put it.
You people who are opposed to a free museum housing one of the most important collections of modern artwork in the farking world are essentially an urban version of the hatfields or mccoys. Family trees with no branches.
Yes, F*ck Fisher for not being the truly 100% altruistic person that all of you are in real life.
Thank god the upper crust of pac heights and the marina wont have to deal with the dregs coming in to look at art.
Thank god that San Francisco will continue to have some of the most provincial and suburban museum collections of any major city in the US.
Thank god our asphalt parking lots are preserved as historic for all eternity!
I live in the Sunset, so I'm kinda "the dregs," I suppose, but I can understand why there were some concerns about bringing extra traffic into the Presidio, one of the more peaceful parts of the city.
I also think it's kinda strange how this idea of "preserving a parking lot" keeps getting tossed around--that obviously wasn't the issue at hand, and, of course, such a museum would only bring more parking lots...
I don't know, I agree that it's preferable to have the collection in the city, and I wasn't 100% against the concept of the museum itself, but I do think some of the concerns were valid.
Does this mean the bowling alley is saved? I'd rather have that than another art museum. (Sorry, craeg...)
Thanks for proving my point guys...
Thank god for this. A museum needs to be run by someone who has taste. And as anyone who has ever set foot in a Gap store can attest, Fisher does not have taste.
his collection is truly amazing - his taste I can't speak about, advisers could have bought all the work- but there is nothing wrong with that collection, and it is our loss that pedestrian issues like parking and traffic are going to hinder it being created.
I second this. I'm not really a museum person in the slightest, but I have seen his collection which was at one of the main Gap office buildings on Spear/Embarc and it was an amazing collection. For my money a better collection than MOMASF.
If it's so nice, then what the hell is this guy doing running a store that sells the worlds ugliest clothes?
his collection is truly a wonder. i have seen 90% of it myself, and have so far photographed not even 10% of it.
i have a friend who works in the Gap HQ, and the art inside of those buildings is incredible. the only shame is that not enough ppl know about it or have seen it.
the beginnings of my collection of photographs of Don Fishers art collection can be seen here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/plug1/sets/72157613475284676/ i look fwd to photographing each and every piece as time goes on.
His collection sounds really nice.
Why not put it somewhere easy to get to, so people can, like, get to it? For example, at or near that selfsame Embarcadero headquarters of the Gap? The guy can afford it.
The problem with the Presidio idea was that it was a terrible location, and Fisher did his usual thing of pulling his connections and running roughshod over opposition rather than doing the much more rational thing of locating the museum near mass transit where more people can actually go there.
it is avail to see in all of the HQ buildings, open to the public. i think it is open from 11-1 M-F, but you might need to check with the sec guards.
agreed though, a central dedicated location would be ideal.
If he was so concerned with sharing his art with the world, why didn't he seek to locate it somewhere accessible by public transportation? Why do the rich people in this city seem so hellbent on creating more auto traffic?
More traffic to something culturally significant. No we cannot have that. And for all you architecture critics, is this really going to ruin the barracks. Is there something that I missed in Art History about the barrack revival period?
Do you put a Michael Minna in a McDonalds? It should suit the collection, and, ahem, it is modern art. I think that they did a great job in putting a significant part of the museum underground. It would have been a great addition to our city. And by the way it is covered by public transit, either by the Presidigo (45) or the (29) and if you walk the (43). Instead we get this great open parking lot.