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It appears that Governor's Island isn't the only former military site drawing the attention of the arts community.
Art, history clash on collection's location
By PATRICIA LEIGH BROWN
The New York Times [New York, N.Y.]
March 30, 2008
SAN FRANCISCO — From the floor-to-ceiling windows in his office atop the Gap headquarters, Don Fisher, the company’s billionaire founder and chairman emeritus, has dazzling IMAX-style vistas of San Francisco Bay. But the killer view has stiff competition from the flotilla of Calders, Diebenkorns, Rauschenbergs, Twomblys and a succession of Mick Jaggers by Andy Warhol that form a veritable art park in his midst.
One of the country’s foremost collectors of contemporary art, Mr. Fisher, 79, and his wife, Doris, 76, say they long for a permanent place to put it all. Mr. Fisher, a San Francisco native who is no stranger to controversy, believes he has found the perfect spot: the historic heart of the Presidio, a national park and National Historic Landmark district.
The Fishers’ plan to build a 100,000-square-foot modern complex of glass and white cast masonry at the head of the park’s storied Civil War parade ground is sparking fierce opposition from preservationists, whom Mr. Fisher calls “the nimbys.”
The National Park Service, the Sierra Club, the National Trust for Historic Preservation have all questioned the museum’s scale, location and style — a sleek set of overlapping white boxes — amid Victorian brick buildings with wooden porches and pitched roofs. “It is unrelated to the nature of the place,” said Whitney Hall, a retired colonel who was the post commander from 1979-1982. “It is so large and intrusive that in effect it establishes a new identity for the historic center of the Presidio.”
Mr. Fisher said recently of an alternate proposal, by a nonprofit history association, for a more modest museum on the site: “Other people have ideas for it. But they don’t have any money.”
In a city where community politics is something of a blood sport, the Fisher plan has caused a culture clash, in which art, history, money and power are slugging it out in a breathtaking urban setting.
The Contemporary Art Museum at the Presidio, or CAMP, designed by Gluckman Mayner Architects of New York, is the latest chapter in the fractious saga of the Presidio, situated on 1,491 rolling, forested acres overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge. In the words of Gary Widman, the president of the Presidio Historical Association, the Main Parade is “holy ground.” It lies near the remains of the garrison built by the Spanish in 1776 and considered the birthplace of San Francisco.
Today the park is home to an eclectic mix of nonprofit groups and the ultimate anchor tenant, George Lucas, whose Victorian-inspired Letterman Digital Arts Center, situated in a less historically significant setting, also elicited heated debate.
“We can’t bring back the military,” said Craig Middleton, executive director of the Presidio Trust. “So the question is, how do you bring back a sense of robustness and activity?”
The parade ground, much of it covered ignominiously by a parking lot, is bordered by brick barracks from the Civil War era. The trust plans to spend $40 million to create a swath of green that will eventually reunite the Presidio with Crissy Field’s resplendent two-mile promenade along San Francisco Bay. The Fishers have promised to contribute $10 million to the restoration — if their plan is approved by the Presidio Trust after public review.
The Fishers decided against donating their collection — including works by Gerhard Richter, Agnes Martin and Chuck Close — to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. They offered to finance a wing, with the caveat that the entire collection be seen. “The museums will never make that commitment,” Mr. Fisher said. “It’s an unfortunate situation where most of the art that is given to museums ends up in the basement.”
When the SFMoma idea fell through, he said, “The trust suggested putting the museum in the Presidio.” (Mr. Middleton insists Mr. Fisher came to them.)
The Fishers plan to set up a foundation, which would own the art in perpetuity, and rehabilitate one of the historic barracks for offices, art studios and classrooms. Mr. Fisher told The San Francisco Chronicle that he wanted to “have some fun being the curator of my collection while I’m still living.”
In circumventing the museum establishment, the Fishers join a growing number of major art patrons whose collections rival or surpass those of traditional museums, said Allan Schwartzman, a New York art adviser who called the Fishers’ cache “one of the great collections of our time.”
In the process, they are defining what it means to be a modern-day Medici. “Money that would have gone to museums is now going into a parallel world,” Mr. Schwartzman said. The issue is whether that parallel world should be a national park landmark district.
Because it is a national landmark district and federal land, the Presidio Trust is legally required to consider reasonable alternative locations for the museum. “It’s a big base,” said I. Michael Heyman, the former secretary of the Smithsonian Institution who sat with Mr. Fisher on the trust’s board. “But he’s a very strong-willed man.”
In an interview, Mr. Fisher indicated that the present site was the only one he would consider, calling it “a major location for a major building that we intend to build.” He added, “I don’t want to be stuck in a corner someplace with the collection we have and the investment we’re making.”
Mr. Fisher is no shrinking violet: a major Republican contributor who also donates generously to local Democrats, he has used his clout to subsidize causes including a ballot measure last year supporting more parking spaces downtown that ran counter to the city’s policy fostering public transportation. (The measure was soundly defeated)
Aaron Peskin, a city supervisor who has often crossed swords with Mr. Fisher, said: “Building relationships with the community is not his M.O. He suffers from what billionaires suffer from — they think they can have everything they want and the public be damned.”
Richard Gluckman, Mr. Fisher’s architect, describes the museum as a public gesture in the grand tradition of the City Beautiful movement of the late 19th century, in which museums and other civic buildings were located in parklike settings.
Mr. Gluckman, the art world’s favorite architect of minimalist spaces, designed A-list galleries for Larry Gagosian and Mary Boone as well as the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh and an addition to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. “Buildings should be of their time,” he said. “To do a historic pastiche of what an Army engineer would do would be disrespectful.”
Toby Rosenblatt, a former president of the city planning commission and the original board chairman of the trust, anticipates that the museum, which he supports, will be “well massaged and modified” during public review. “It’s always been a place that’s kept moving,” he said of the Presidio. “That’s its history.”
But history on this contentious ground is prone to shifting perspectives. “The Presidio is not a San Francisco park or a subdivision to be cluttered with development,” said Boyd De Larios, 64, a descendant of the Spanish Portola and Anza expeditions, discoverers of San Francisco Bay. “It is a place with a rich history which needs to be revealed further, not submerged in vanity projects.”
Eric
Art, history clash on collection's location
By PATRICIA LEIGH BROWN
The New York Times [New York, N.Y.]
March 30, 2008
SAN FRANCISCO — From the floor-to-ceiling windows in his office atop the Gap headquarters, Don Fisher, the company’s billionaire founder and chairman emeritus, has dazzling IMAX-style vistas of San Francisco Bay. But the killer view has stiff competition from the flotilla of Calders, Diebenkorns, Rauschenbergs, Twomblys and a succession of Mick Jaggers by Andy Warhol that form a veritable art park in his midst.
One of the country’s foremost collectors of contemporary art, Mr. Fisher, 79, and his wife, Doris, 76, say they long for a permanent place to put it all. Mr. Fisher, a San Francisco native who is no stranger to controversy, believes he has found the perfect spot: the historic heart of the Presidio, a national park and National Historic Landmark district.
The Fishers’ plan to build a 100,000-square-foot modern complex of glass and white cast masonry at the head of the park’s storied Civil War parade ground is sparking fierce opposition from preservationists, whom Mr. Fisher calls “the nimbys.”
The National Park Service, the Sierra Club, the National Trust for Historic Preservation have all questioned the museum’s scale, location and style — a sleek set of overlapping white boxes — amid Victorian brick buildings with wooden porches and pitched roofs. “It is unrelated to the nature of the place,” said Whitney Hall, a retired colonel who was the post commander from 1979-1982. “It is so large and intrusive that in effect it establishes a new identity for the historic center of the Presidio.”
Mr. Fisher said recently of an alternate proposal, by a nonprofit history association, for a more modest museum on the site: “Other people have ideas for it. But they don’t have any money.”
In a city where community politics is something of a blood sport, the Fisher plan has caused a culture clash, in which art, history, money and power are slugging it out in a breathtaking urban setting.
The Contemporary Art Museum at the Presidio, or CAMP, designed by Gluckman Mayner Architects of New York, is the latest chapter in the fractious saga of the Presidio, situated on 1,491 rolling, forested acres overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge. In the words of Gary Widman, the president of the Presidio Historical Association, the Main Parade is “holy ground.” It lies near the remains of the garrison built by the Spanish in 1776 and considered the birthplace of San Francisco.
Today the park is home to an eclectic mix of nonprofit groups and the ultimate anchor tenant, George Lucas, whose Victorian-inspired Letterman Digital Arts Center, situated in a less historically significant setting, also elicited heated debate.
“We can’t bring back the military,” said Craig Middleton, executive director of the Presidio Trust. “So the question is, how do you bring back a sense of robustness and activity?”
The parade ground, much of it covered ignominiously by a parking lot, is bordered by brick barracks from the Civil War era. The trust plans to spend $40 million to create a swath of green that will eventually reunite the Presidio with Crissy Field’s resplendent two-mile promenade along San Francisco Bay. The Fishers have promised to contribute $10 million to the restoration — if their plan is approved by the Presidio Trust after public review.
The Fishers decided against donating their collection — including works by Gerhard Richter, Agnes Martin and Chuck Close — to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. They offered to finance a wing, with the caveat that the entire collection be seen. “The museums will never make that commitment,” Mr. Fisher said. “It’s an unfortunate situation where most of the art that is given to museums ends up in the basement.”
When the SFMoma idea fell through, he said, “The trust suggested putting the museum in the Presidio.” (Mr. Middleton insists Mr. Fisher came to them.)
The Fishers plan to set up a foundation, which would own the art in perpetuity, and rehabilitate one of the historic barracks for offices, art studios and classrooms. Mr. Fisher told The San Francisco Chronicle that he wanted to “have some fun being the curator of my collection while I’m still living.”
In circumventing the museum establishment, the Fishers join a growing number of major art patrons whose collections rival or surpass those of traditional museums, said Allan Schwartzman, a New York art adviser who called the Fishers’ cache “one of the great collections of our time.”
In the process, they are defining what it means to be a modern-day Medici. “Money that would have gone to museums is now going into a parallel world,” Mr. Schwartzman said. The issue is whether that parallel world should be a national park landmark district.
Because it is a national landmark district and federal land, the Presidio Trust is legally required to consider reasonable alternative locations for the museum. “It’s a big base,” said I. Michael Heyman, the former secretary of the Smithsonian Institution who sat with Mr. Fisher on the trust’s board. “But he’s a very strong-willed man.”
In an interview, Mr. Fisher indicated that the present site was the only one he would consider, calling it “a major location for a major building that we intend to build.” He added, “I don’t want to be stuck in a corner someplace with the collection we have and the investment we’re making.”
Mr. Fisher is no shrinking violet: a major Republican contributor who also donates generously to local Democrats, he has used his clout to subsidize causes including a ballot measure last year supporting more parking spaces downtown that ran counter to the city’s policy fostering public transportation. (The measure was soundly defeated)
Aaron Peskin, a city supervisor who has often crossed swords with Mr. Fisher, said: “Building relationships with the community is not his M.O. He suffers from what billionaires suffer from — they think they can have everything they want and the public be damned.”
Richard Gluckman, Mr. Fisher’s architect, describes the museum as a public gesture in the grand tradition of the City Beautiful movement of the late 19th century, in which museums and other civic buildings were located in parklike settings.
Mr. Gluckman, the art world’s favorite architect of minimalist spaces, designed A-list galleries for Larry Gagosian and Mary Boone as well as the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh and an addition to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. “Buildings should be of their time,” he said. “To do a historic pastiche of what an Army engineer would do would be disrespectful.”
Toby Rosenblatt, a former president of the city planning commission and the original board chairman of the trust, anticipates that the museum, which he supports, will be “well massaged and modified” during public review. “It’s always been a place that’s kept moving,” he said of the Presidio. “That’s its history.”
But history on this contentious ground is prone to shifting perspectives. “The Presidio is not a San Francisco park or a subdivision to be cluttered with development,” said Boyd De Larios, 64, a descendant of the Spanish Portola and Anza expeditions, discoverers of San Francisco Bay. “It is a place with a rich history which needs to be revealed further, not submerged in vanity projects.”
Eric