In 1969, San Francisco natives Don and Doris Fisher opened a small store on Ocean Avenue called Gap – a reference to “generation gap.”  The store at its start sold jeans and records, but within months they dropped the records. The Gap grew into a multilocation company. In 1974, it launched its own brand, and in 1976, the Gap went public.  

Over the past 30 years, the Fishers have built an exceptional collection of more than 1,000 objects of modern and contemporary art. They began by collecting prints, and went on to add paintings, sculpture, drawings, photographs, and other media.

On December 3 of last year, Mr. and Mrs. Fisher unveiled the design of an art museum they propose to build in San Francisco’s Presidio. The museum, to be known as Contemporary Art Museum at the Presidio (CAMP), will house the Fisher’s collection.  

On January 30, the Presidio Trust announced that it has accepted the Fisher’s proposal and will begin working with them to make the museum a reality.       

In addition to the museum building, the Fishers will renovate a nearby barracks, Building 101, which will house the museum’s bookstore and public education programs, including a photo studio, ceramics studio, and painting and drawing classes.   

The museum’s architect, Richard Gluckman of the firm, Gluckman Mayner, is one of the country’s foremost museum architects. Gluckman Mayner’s projects include the Whitney Museum of Art, the Andy Warhol Museum and the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.   

In a recent interview Mrs. Fisher said, “we are extremely proud of this project [CAMP] and we are thrilled to have the chance to give something back to the city that we love.”    

On January 21, Northside San Francisco met with Mr. Fisher at Gap Headquarters on Folsom Street. We spoke with him in one of the galleries there, surrounded by masterpieces from the Fisher collection. 

NORTHSIDE S.F.:  Why have you and Mrs. Fisher brought forward this proposal to build the Contemporary Art Museum at the Presidio?  Why now?

FISHER:  Doris and I have decided that this is the right time to do something with our art. We’ve been thinking about it for a long time. We have a very large collection. Our philosophy, and I think a main reason for the museum to exist, is to educate the public. We’re doing this to educate the public in the art that we’ve collected. And of course we want others to enjoy the art as we have.

NORTHSIDE S.F.:  Why not simply donate your collection to an existing museum?

FISHER: There is no guarantee that if we were to donate our art to an existing museum that the art will be shown. We wanted as much of it as possible to be shown and available to the public. We determined that the only way to make that happen was to build something ourselves. The Presidio seemed like the ideal site to construct a museum to house our collection. I had been on the Presidio Board and knew that there was an area that had been designated for a museum or a building of that sort at the head of the Parade Grounds. So, we decided to make an unsolicited offer to the Presidio. They then put the site out to bid to see if anyone else was interested in using the same space. It’s done in a very democratic fashion.

NORTHSIDE S.F.: Will the museum feature art from other collections?

FISHER: We want the museum to stay contemporary. So, we expect to bring in shows that will be very much of interest to a great number of people from the public. That’s very important to us.

NORTHSIDE S.F.: Will the museum feature any educational programs?

FISHER:  Yes, we will have educational programs. We will have an educational curator. I expect that we’re going to have a photo studio to teach people photography. We’ll probably have a ceramics studio. We may have a wood shop. We’ll definitely have painting and drawing classes. We’ll have lectures by artists and art historians and so forth. We want to make it an active place. The whole objective of this is to get the public involved. It’s not something we’re doing for ourselves.

NORTHSIDE S.F.: Will you and Mrs. Fisher be involved with management of the museum?

FISHER:  Once the museum is built it will be part of a foundation. The art will be as well. We won’t necessarily be running the museum. It will have a board of trustees of one form or another. After we’re gone, it will be much more publicly managed than it will when we’re around. One of the things I want to do is have some fun curating some of our own art shows. I’ve been doing it with our collection.

NORTHSIDE S.F.: How will the museum fit into the Presidio?  What role will it play in the park’s future?

FISHER: I think that the museum fits in very well. I think the museum will be a catalyst to bringing other like-minded kinds of organizations into the Presidio.    

This museum will attract people to the Presidio. While they are there they will be able to go around the park and see some of the historical things that are located there. I also think that there is an opportunity for the Presidio itself to have sculpture around its 1,450 acres. I think they could make it a very interesting place.

NORTHSIDE S.F.: How do you answer critics who say that the design of the museum doesn’t work in the Presidio with its historic military type structures?

FISHER: The architecture in the Presidio is good in some areas and not so good in others. There have been questions about our architecture. People like our architecture. And people don’t like our architecture. Some people think it fits, and some don’t think it fits. The rules for historical areas set by the interior department say that architecture should be of its time. When you look at the Presidio, you see the barracks buildings that were built in 1890. They were of their time. There are other buildings that have been built since that time, and they are completely different types of architecture. The Officer’s Club is a different architecture, and the Golden Gate Club is a totally different architecture. You’ll find that there is a tremendous amount of variation throughout the Presidio in the kind of architecture that is there. Those buildings were designed as of their time. Our museum will be of its time, so we feel that it will fit in very nicely.

NORTHSIDE S.F.: Tell us about your architect.

FISHER: I think that we have a tremendously talented architect with a national reputation, who has done a really nice job. His name is Richard Gluckman. I think that the way that he’s designed the museum with the glass that he has on the outside of the building gives the visitors to the Presidio an exciting look into the museum from the outside. This to me makes much more sense than building a box of masonry.

NORTHSIDE S.F.: I understand that you and Mrs. Fisher will be contributing to the landscaping around the museum.

FISHER: We will be advancing $10 million toward relandscaping the Parade Grounds. I think that there is every intention that the Parade Grounds will be finished at the same time as the museum, so there’ll be a beautiful landscaped area all the way from the top of the Parade Grounds on down. Ultimately, the landscaping will go right down to the Bay and it’s going to make the place very attractive for people to come and enjoy. I think that everyone has seen the kind of attendance and interest that people have in Crissy Field since that was redone. It’s become a very popular public spot, and we hope that will happen for the balance of the Presidio.

NORTHSIDE S.F.: How did you begin collecting art?

FISHER:  We started our company in 1969. In about 1976 we went public. So, we had a little money. And we started buying prints to put on our walls in our offices, and from there we got a little more aggressive and started buying paintings, and over time the collection grew. We’ve got a big collection of prints, and all the prints that we’ve collected are in sets. We just don’t buy one or two pictures from an artist’s collection of prints. If they’ve got eight or nine, we’ll buy all of them. I think there’s much more impact, and I think that you can understand the artist if you have the whole set.

NORTHSIDE S.F.: Do you have a philosophy that underlies your art collecting? 

FISHER:  I wouldn’t say that we have one philosophy that underlies our collecting. Our collection is such that we buy what we like. We haven’t had a curator. One of the philosophies that we had was that we didn’t want to buy anything that we couldn’t sell at auction. You may buy a piece of art that you like at a particular time. But as time passes that may change, and ultimately you decide you no longer want it. If you are unable to sell it, you’ll have a whole basement of art that you end up not liking. And so we thought it was important that we’d be able to sell some of the art if we wanted to. It so happens that we’ve sold very few pieces.

NORTHSIDE S.F.: As I walked through your galleries here at the Gap Headquarters, I see art from very well-known artists: Warhol, Calder, Serra, Stella, and Lichtenstein. And you have many pieces from each of these artists.

FISHER:  As it turns out, the artists that we’ve followed and liked, we’ve followed at depth and we haven’t just bought one piece of a certain artist.    

We’re sitting here in the Warhol area, and we have one of the better collections of Warhol. And we did that because it’s really hard if you’re building a collection that will have a national reputation to do it with artists that nobody’s heard of. There are lots of good artists out there, and as for me, I can’t really figure out what makes an artist popular or not popular. I don’t know if it’s the dealers, or the auction houses, or what it is. At any rate, we have a collection that includes many artist that are well-known.

NORTHSIDE S.F.: Do you have a favorite piece? Why is it your favorite?

FISHER: I think that my favorite piece today is this William Kentridge piece that’s right here (Gestures to side room that has the Kentridge installation.)  He’s a real contemporary artist. I’d say his art is from the year 2000 on. I think he’s doing things that nobody else has done. I give a lot of respect to creativity. I think that that is what makes the world go ‘round. From my point of view, I get really turned on when I see some art that nobody has done before or thought about before. It’s unbelievable. We just bought some more of his pieces in New York this last couple of days because he has a show at Marian Goodman’s. And what he’s doing just blows your mind. And its not one of the more expensive pieces, so it is not a matter of dollars.

NORTHSIDE S.F.: Have provisions been made for the museum to add to the collection over time?