At SFMOMA, the Fisher family’s collection gets its first full rehang in a decade

SFMOMA’s reimagined galleries for the Doris and Donald Fisher Collection, nearly 250 works on four floors underwritten by the family’s foundation, remain one of the city’s central museum offerings this fall, a decade after the Gap founders’ art went on public view.

By Pilar Ashcombe

Ten years after the Gap fortune’s art collection moved into the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Fisher family has given the city a second look at it. Reimagined: The Fisher Collection at 10, which opened on April 18, spreads nearly 250 works by 35 artists across about 60,000 square feet on four floors of the museum on Third Street. SFMOMA calls it the first complete transformation of the collection since it went on public view with the museum’s expansion in 2016.

This fall it is still the anchor of the building. Mission Local’s November guide to the city’s museums lists the reinstallation as open and calls it “a spectacular collection,” noting that The New York Times wrote that the rehang is “unlike anything SFMOMA has done in its 90 years.” It shares the building with a blockbuster: “RM x SFMOMA: Between You and Me,” the collection of the BTS member RM, which Mission Local reported opened to throngs.

A family’s taste, on four floors

The Fishers’ collection is a portrait of a couple’s friendships as much as of an era. Doris and Donald Fisher, who founded Gap in San Francisco in 1969, collected Alexander Calder, Ellsworth Kelly and Sol LeWitt in greater depth than any other artists, according to SFMOMA, and the fifth floor is now given over to those three, with about two dozen works by each. The sixth floor, “Memory and Matter,” centers on Anselm Kiefer and William Kentridge; the Kentridge galleries were designed by his longtime collaborator, the stage and exhibition designer Sabine Theunissen. The fourth floor, “Ways of Seeing,” offers single-artist rooms for 14 figures including Philip Guston, Agnes Martin, Joan Mitchell, Gerhard Richter and Cy Twombly. The third floor is devoted to Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, including a scale model of “Cupid’s Span,” the bow-and-arrow sculpture on the Embarcadero.

The museum has brought out works that rarely or never appeared in the original installation. Among them is LeWitt’s “Wall Drawing #477,” last shown publicly in Chicago in 1986 and one of seven LeWitt wall drawings the museum is realizing for the rehang; a small Calder mobile, “Star and Crescent,” made months before the artist’s death in 1976; and Shirin Neshat’s video “Passage,” not shown since 2017.

The show is led by Ted Mann, SFMOMA’s project assistant curator of the Fisher Collection, and Gamynne Guillotte, the museum’s chief education and public engagement officer. It leans on accessibility: tactile maps, visual descriptions for every work, touch objects and a family space called the Co-Lab.

For anyone curious about the family itself, the most revealing object may be on the fourth floor. A new multimedia timeline traces how the collection was formed, and among its pieces is a book made for the Fishers’ 50th wedding anniversary in 2003, filled with messages from artists in the collection, many by hand and in the artists’ signature styles, according to the museum.

The arrangement behind the walls

The galleries rest on an unusual deal. In 2009, SFMOMA agreed with the Fisher family to place more than 720 works by about 100 artists on long-term loan to the museum. The term was first set at 25 years and later extended to 100 years, with an option to renew in 25-year increments, the museum says. Every 10 years, for six months or longer at the museum’s discretion, SFMOMA devotes the Fisher galleries solely to Fisher works. The rest of the time, its own collection and outside loans can mingle with them.

The family also pays. The museum credits the Fisher Art Foundation, which the Fishers established to support the care and presentation of the collection, with “visionary support” for the reinstallation and for the Co-Lab. The donor list reads like a page from the city’s benefit-season program: lead support from Penny S. and James G. Coulter, the Mimi and Peter Haas Fund, and Diana Nelson and John Atwater, and further gifts from Dana and Bob Emery, Katie Hall and Tom Knutsen, Concepción S. and Irwin Federman, and Susan Swig, among others.

“The reinstallation of the Fisher Collection galleries reflects the creativity, innovation and energy that has always defined SFMOMA and the broader San Francisco community,” Robert J. Fisher said on behalf of the family when the museum announced the project. He called the new presentation “a gift to San Francisco and an invitation to visitors from the Bay Area and around the world.”

Christopher Bedford, SFMOMA’s Helen and Charles Schwab Director, thanked the family “for giving us the opportunity to experiment.” The new galleries, he said, upend the habit of organizing modern art by movement in favor of “sharing stories that are compelling, relatable and which capture the enduring power of the works on view.”

Old money, still on the wall

The Gap fortune remains one of San Francisco’s large ones. Forbes’ real-time billionaires estimates, as of the close of trading on Friday, Oct. 23, put John Fisher’s net worth at $3.59 billion, Robert Fisher’s at $1.88 billion and William Fisher’s at $1.57 billion; Forbes’ 2026 World’s Billionaires list put Doris Fisher’s at $1.6 billion. Forbes attributes each fortune to Gap. John Fisher also owns the Athletics baseball club and the San Jose Earthquakes.

The Inquirer’s October survey of the 100 families who hold San Francisco’s wealth included the Fishers among the established families now sharing the city’s civic life with newer technology fortunes. At SFMOMA, at least, the older name is the one on the walls of four floors, and the arrangement the family struck in 2009 is meant to keep it there for most of a century.

SFMOMA is open Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays through Sundays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Thursdays from noon to 8 p.m.; it is closed Wednesdays, according to Mission Local’s guide.