Setting Up CAMP

Image © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein

By Joelle Seligson

This article was published in Museum, January/February issue of 2008.

The office of the man who’s clothed America in blue jeans and basic tees for nearly four decades is not traditionally outfitted. An original Alexander Calder sculpture adorns the table in Donald Fisher’s workspace, located in the San Francisco headquarters of Gap Inc., the retail outlet he and his wife founded in 1969. For years, only invited guests to the clothing company’s command center have set eyes on Don and Doris’s extensive collection of Andy Warhol portraits, Roy Lichtenstein panels and other beacons of modern art. Its estimated net worth: at least $1 billion.

But a small audience for a private collection no longer satisfies the man who bagged his billions by bringing fashion to the masses. His proposed solution: the Contemporary Art Museum of the Presidio (CAMP), a mega-museum in America’s first privatized national park on San Francisco’s northern tip. If the Presidio Trust, which manages the largest section of the park, accepts the Fishers’ proposal, CAMP will be a 100,000-square-foot structure with more gallery space than the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA).

Area art aficionados have lauded CAMP’s prospective construction. After all, more than 1,000 works—”one of the most important [collections] in the world,” according to SFMOMA Director Neal Benezra—that have been largely unseen would be on public display. Others, though, are up in arms. The protesters range from environmentalists raising objections at public hearings to museum-world observers, not all of whom are sure that Don Fisher’s desire to “have a little curatorial fun,” as he told the New York Times, necessarily a museum makes.

As of December, the makings of the museum are little more than art, aspiration and a few official documents. The Fishers have been involved in “real conversations” about the idea since early 2006, according to the couple’s representatives at public affairs agency Singer Associates. Initial discussions involved talks with the de Young Museum and SFMOMA. As the Fishers are heavily involved with the latter—Don is on the museum’s board; Doris serves on its education committee—speculation was that their collection would wind up in a dedicated wing of the 225,000-square-foot institution.

The deal fell through. “Primarily, it became an issue of space,” says Kiley Russell, a Singer Associates spokesman. “Their collection is so vast, and [Don] has always wanted to display [it] in a way that would really capture the entirety.” The Fishers’ method of gathering art has been described as “collecting in depth,” purchasing numerous works by several key artists, such as Chuck Close and Ellsworth Kelly, rather than a few by many. “The Fishers want a space that will really complement that philosophy, so they can display as much as possible,” Russell explains.

Don and Doris officially proposed their plan for CAMP in August. Local media outlets embraced the Fishers’ announcement as a brilliant prospect for the city. “San Francisco’s stature as a cultural destination and hub of new art scholarship will jump dramatically” if CAMP is realized, wrote the San Francisco Chronicle in one of several commending articles. Fisher spokesman Charlie Goodyear remembers the response to the coverage as comprising “dozens and dozens of comments, the vast majority of which were very, very positive.”

On closer examination, the feedback seems more evenly divided. Some respondents shared the Chronicle’s enthusiasm: ”The new museum will definitely fill a gap [in] our new vision of a world-class city.” Others were more hesitant, questioning the Fishers’ intention, collection and especially choice of location. “I really oppose all of the building up in the Presidio,” wrote one reader, adding, “There has to be a better place for this if we really want to have (yet another) modern art museum in SF.”

Concerns about ruining the sanctity of the Presidio, a former military post that now has both natural and residential areas, are most widely expressed. An August editorial in the San Francisco Bay Guardian, “Oppose Don Fisher’s Museum,” touched on environmentalists’ greatest misgivings: The Presidio lacks both public transportation and parking, meaning the museum would increase traffic and congestion, and a new, large building would wipe out open space, historic structures and scenic views of the nearby bay and Golden Gate Bridge.

“I don’t think the proposed project is a reasonable one,” says Pinky Kushner, vice chair of the Sierra Club’s San Francisco Group Executive Committee. “It will crowd the general area and change it from a park landscape to an urban landscape.” She maintains that CAMP does not fit with the Presidio’s mission. “If that mission had been to advance the culture of the world or of California . . . that would’ve been one thing. But the mission is not that. And it’s a little odd for someone to come in and say, ‘Well, I didn’t read any of this, but here’s what I want to do.’”

Presidio Trust Executive Director Craig Middleton, on the other hand, claims to be “thrilled” with the Fishers’ pitch, and says it entirely plays into the park’s broader mission. Noting that the mayor of San Francisco and Speaker of the House (and reputed friend of the Fishers) Nancy Pelosi both have voiced support for the proposal, he insists that the overall response is typical for this type of project. “People wanted to acknowledge what an extraordinary proposal this could be,” he says. “I think most people look at it that way. There will always be somebody who wants to find something negative, but that’s just the way it is.”

Also a non-issue, to some: the Fishers’ lack of official museum experience. The pair readily admit to playing amateur curator with their perhaps priceless collection; most of their pieces were purchased without professional curatorial assistance. In addition, Don acknowledged in a San Francisco Examiner article that the decision to construct CAMP instead of donating the collection to an existing museum “basically came down to what kind of curatorial control my wife could have. We want to have some involvement with the collection during our lifetime.”

CAMP will resemble professional museums worldwide, with a professional staff and a board of directors and the collection placed in trust, according to Kiley Russell. But while Russell is not yet certain what the Fishers’ title will be at the museum, he says they will most likely maintain some sort of curatorial role. Curatorship is something the couple has “learned on the go,” he adds. In their many years of collecting and art appreciation, “they’ve probably gotten quite a world-class education just from the type of people they’re collecting from, the circles that they move in and the folks that they know.”

Others, again, have greater trepidations. Marshall Duell, curator at the Old Courthouse Museum in Santa Ana, Calif., and regional representative for AAM’s Curators’ Committee (CurCom), says he doubts the Fishers’ hands-on experience has fully prepared them for the job ahead. “Running a museum, caring for artwork, developing exhibitions is incredibly complicated and serious,” he warns. “As we know, there are folks that have spent their entire professional lives doing that sort of thing. I don’t think that it can be learned through travel and contact with several art dealers.”

The Fishers are not the first billionaire art fans to make a museum entrée. The Menil Collection, Broad Art Foundation and Nasher Sculpture Center all owe their existence to private collectors. Not all such arrangements have worked out well, however. Duell recalls the precedent set by journalist Charles Lummis, who used his private collection to found the Southwest Museum of the American Indian in 1907 and was eventually asked to leave by his own board. “I hope that things do not devolve for the Fishers that way,” Duell says.

“There’s a real difference between a museum and a private collection,” he continues. “Apparently, the Fishers have chosen to use the word ‘museum.’ That’s at their own discretion, but I do not believe it’s truly a museum; it’s simply a private collection in a public venue.” The art would have been better off at SFMOMA or the de Young, he contends, institutions that already know how to properly manage their collections and work with the community.

For now, the proposal process continues, with a scheduled opening in 2010 if everything goes as the Fishers plan. Russell asserts that CAMP has a “really good shot.” Middleton maintains that it is an “extraordinary” idea. Kushner argues that there would have to be “compromises every step of the way.”

Duell, on the other hand, describes the situation as “just one of those things” that occurs in the art world—and one that won’t change unless human nature does first. “I think that ego has a tremendous amount to do with it,” he says. “I think we’ve been seeing this go on since the Renaissance. People appropriate those collections, perhaps make personal connections with them and then, well, the human personality just sort of goes from there.”

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