[CPEO-MEF] REUSE: Museum at the Presidio of San Francisco

[Lenny Siegel <lennysiegel@gmail.com>]

Fisher's awkward location for Presidio museum

John King
San Francisco Chronicle (CA) Urban Design Writer
June 13, 2008

From the day it became a national park, San Francisco's Presidio has 
been caught between competing and often contradictory visions of whom it 
should serve and how it should evolve.

The tension is especially vivid now, sharpened by Donald Fisher's desire 
to build a modern art museum at the former Army base's Main Post. The 
criticism runs the ideological gamut - from leftists who don't like that 
Fisher is a Republican businessman to traditionalists who say 
contemporary art doesn't belong in a historic military setting.

In fact, Fisher's museum could be a catalyst that helps revive the Main 
Post while broadening the Presidio's cultural appeal. But the critics 
are right about one thing: It's in the wrong location.

The site Fisher wants sits between the spot where the Presidio was 
founded in 1776 and a line of red-brick barracks from the 1890s that is 
the architectural high point of the park. Insert a 100,000-square-foot 
box of white masonry and glass, and the present is bound to pull rank on 
the past.

...

For the entire column, see
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/06/13/BAF910PUFL.DTL&hw=Presidio&sn=001&sc=1000

--


Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org



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