Standing in the sculpture garden of the MOMA on a sunny day is a prime SF experience - like Hunky Jesus, but with fewer pecs. Currently featuring a quantum cloud of thousands of tiny metal shards, flattened ovals, and an eleven-foot spider, the top two floors (+ sculpture garden) are devoted to the Fisher Collection: Calder to Warhol.
Purported to be the exhibit that bumps the MOMA to a new level, the halls are a post-modern visual feast, filled with Roy Lichtenstein's abstract oil cartoons, Andy Warhol's Elvises wielding six shooters, and Cy Twombley's crayon squiggles depicting (apparently) the struggle of gods in Classical Antiquity.
Collected by Gap founders Doris and Donald Fisher, the exhibit is an ode to great post-1960 modern art. Along with iconic works by Warhol, Lichtenstein, and Twombley are pieces by Alexander Calder, Anselm Kiefer, Ellsworth Kelly, Chuck Close, Agnes Martin, and many more.
The Fishers loved them some art and, when they found an artist they liked, visited him/her at the place where he/she constructed large apple cores/industrial metal sculptures/squiggles and learned to view the work through the artist's eyes and mind. Buying seminal works in large groups, they added over 1100 pieces to their stash over the course of forty years, making it one of the most important private collections in the world.
Those Gap jeans you bought in 1992? Helped fund things like Elvis in silver triplicate. How artistically minded of you.
