Unraveling SFMOMA’s deal for the Fisher collection
In 2005, Donald Fisher, a billionaire retailer and one of the world’s most prominent art collectors, telephoned the head of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
The proposed museum addition would house the fabled collection of contemporary art Fisher had built with his wife, Doris, over four decades.
Does it serve the museum’s mission, and the director’s determination to preserve its integrity?
When SFMOMA announced in September 2009 what it called — all in a single news release — “this groundbreaking partnership,” “this extraordinary partnership” and “this unprecedented collaboration,” one thing was clear:
Some prying I began doing in April, before the expanded museum opened, dislodged the fact that a grouping of Fisher collection works must hang together in the galleries once every 10 years.
[...] a request for more details, including a look at the loan agreement, was repeatedly avoided or ignored by the museum’s public relations team.
[...] even basic facts, such as when the loan term ends, were not forthcoming — until the museum learned this story was planned.
A 2013 federal income tax filing, the most recent available, lists Fisher and her three sons — including Bob, who is president of the SFMOMA board — as the foundation’s only trustees.
Benezra professes great confidence in the quality and depth of the relationship between the family and the museum, and I see no reason to doubt his judgment.
While that could put a crimp in the museum’s long-range plans, other aspects of the partnership recently unearthed appear to be far more disconcerting for us, the audience.
Unlike in other spaces designated to honor big donors, which might hold a range of different works and exhibitions, the Doris and Donald Fisher Collection Galleries are required to contain primarily Fisher works at all times.
[...] for the next 100 years, their job will be limited in those galleries to a kind of scholarly embroidery, filling in around the edges of a predetermined scenario with works by other artists, such as women, artists of color or California artists.
Yet museum audiences expect their visit to be at least in part an educational experience, and virtually all museums see interpretation and education as key aspects of their mission.
Curators and museum educators are charged with meeting that need, and we have a right to assume that the choices they make are based, above all, upon their training and experience.
Before a single word of text is affixed to a gallery wall, explicit and subliminal messages are conveyed through the selections made, their placement and juxtaposition, even choices such as wall color, path of viewing and relative scale of objects and room.
[...] a museum that professes to be, as SFMOMA’s mission statement claims, “a dynamic center for modern and contemporary art,” must take a wider view.
[...] if a core collection display is frozen in a certain time, tied to a prescribed point of view, how does the museum stay current, much less maintain its longed-for dynamism?
Based solely on the works now on view, it’s clear that SFMOMA is able to share original objects that can be experienced in no other museum, revealing aspects of the history of recent art that no one else can.
In an environment of secrecy and tight-lipped, lawyerly communications, we are left to speculate on where it plans to take us, and what new role its curators will play.
The proposed museum addition would house the fabled collection of contemporary art Fisher had built with his wife, Doris, over four decades.
Does it serve the museum’s mission, and the director’s determination to preserve its integrity?
When SFMOMA announced in September 2009 what it called — all in a single news release — “this groundbreaking partnership,” “this extraordinary partnership” and “this unprecedented collaboration,” one thing was clear:
Some prying I began doing in April, before the expanded museum opened, dislodged the fact that a grouping of Fisher collection works must hang together in the galleries once every 10 years.
[...] a request for more details, including a look at the loan agreement, was repeatedly avoided or ignored by the museum’s public relations team.
[...] even basic facts, such as when the loan term ends, were not forthcoming — until the museum learned this story was planned.
A 2013 federal income tax filing, the most recent available, lists Fisher and her three sons — including Bob, who is president of the SFMOMA board — as the foundation’s only trustees.
Benezra professes great confidence in the quality and depth of the relationship between the family and the museum, and I see no reason to doubt his judgment.
While that could put a crimp in the museum’s long-range plans, other aspects of the partnership recently unearthed appear to be far more disconcerting for us, the audience.
Unlike in other spaces designated to honor big donors, which might hold a range of different works and exhibitions, the Doris and Donald Fisher Collection Galleries are required to contain primarily Fisher works at all times.
[...] for the next 100 years, their job will be limited in those galleries to a kind of scholarly embroidery, filling in around the edges of a predetermined scenario with works by other artists, such as women, artists of color or California artists.
Yet museum audiences expect their visit to be at least in part an educational experience, and virtually all museums see interpretation and education as key aspects of their mission.
Curators and museum educators are charged with meeting that need, and we have a right to assume that the choices they make are based, above all, upon their training and experience.
Before a single word of text is affixed to a gallery wall, explicit and subliminal messages are conveyed through the selections made, their placement and juxtaposition, even choices such as wall color, path of viewing and relative scale of objects and room.
[...] a museum that professes to be, as SFMOMA’s mission statement claims, “a dynamic center for modern and contemporary art,” must take a wider view.
[...] if a core collection display is frozen in a certain time, tied to a prescribed point of view, how does the museum stay current, much less maintain its longed-for dynamism?
Based solely on the works now on view, it’s clear that SFMOMA is able to share original objects that can be experienced in no other museum, revealing aspects of the history of recent art that no one else can.
In an environment of secrecy and tight-lipped, lawyerly communications, we are left to speculate on where it plans to take us, and what new role its curators will play.