Art and History Clash in San Francisco
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.”
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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.”