San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) Board Chair Charles Schwab and Director Neal Benezra today announced that the museum is developing a groundbreaking relationship with Doris and Donald Fisher that would provide the Fisher Collection—one of the world’s leading collections of contemporary art—with a home at SFMOMA.

The Fishers, founders of Gap Inc. 1969, have long envisioned keeping their collection intact for the public in their hometown of San Francisco. The Fisher Collection includes some 1,100 works by leading artists including Alexander Calder, Chuck Close, Willem de Kooning, Richard Diebenkorn, Anselm Kiefer, Ellsworth Kelly, Roy Lichtenstein, Brice Marden, Agnes Martin, Gerhard Richter, Richard Serra, Cy Twombly, and Andy Warhol, among many others.

SFMOMA is in the planning phase for a major expansion, announced last April that will triple the museum’s gallery space. The expansion reignited the Fishers’ hopes of partnering with the museum to house their collection in San Francisco by providing the necessary space and resources. In August 2007 the Fishers proposed building a museum in the Presidio, but decided this past July not to move forward. Upon completion of SFMOMA’s planned expansion, works from the Fisher Collection will be on display in a new wing that will also incorporate art from the museum’s collection. In addition, works from the Fisher Collection will be interwoven with SFMOMA’s modern and contemporary holdings in existing galleries. Together, they will form one of the world’s most important collections of art of the past 50 years. The Fishers will create a trust, administered in collaboration with SFMOMA, to oversee the care of their collection at the museum for a minimum of 25 years.

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