SFMoMA Raises $250 Million for New Wing

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art announced Thursday that it had raised more than $250 million to expand the museum and double its endowment. The museum is building a new wing to show the collection of Gap founders Donald and Doris Fisher.





Ian Reeves
Andy Warhol's "Nine Multicolored Marilyns (Reversal Series)" is part of the Fisher collection.

In late September, just days before Mr. Fisher died of cancer, the museum announced that the Fishers had agreed to place their collection on loan at SFMoMA for at least 25 years. At the time, the museum's director, Neal Benezra, said that the Fisher family would make a donation toward the museum's expansion and endowment. Thursday's announcement revealed that the 25-year loan agreement had been stretched to 100 years, and was renewable after that.

The $250 million in gifts did not have names attached, but the donors presumably include the Fisher family and the museum's chairman, Charles Schwab, who had long sought to bring the Fisher collection to SFMoMA.

Mr. Fisher had originally wanted to build his own museum and had pursued a site in the Presidio, a one-time army post in San Francisco that is now a national park. But architectural preservationists opposed the plan, and Mr. Fisher eventually dropped it.

SFMoMA plans to raise another $230 million to fund the expansion, which will add 100,000 square feet of gallery and public space and 40,000 of support space. The new wing will primarily be used to show the Fisher collection, although works from the museum's own collection will be mixed into the installation, and works from the Fisher collection will be integrated into the museum's other galleries.

The new wing will be located on Howard Street, between Third and New Montgomery Streets, and will connect to the museum's current building along its southern façade. The museum said it would solicit proposals from a group of architectural firms and would choose an architect for the project in the fall. It anticipates completing the expansion in 2016.

The Fisher collection includes more than 1,100 works of art made between 1928 and the present. It is particularly strong in works by Alexander Calder, Ellsworth Kelly, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Chuck Close and Gerhard Richter, among others.