Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/691761
"You see these ripples?" asks Jeffrey Fraenkel, standing between Alexander Calder's Big Crinkly and the 19,000-plant vertical garden on the third floor terrace of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art's shiny new Snøhetta-designed building. It's the last Friday in April and the second hour of Art Bash, the VIP inauguration party for the seven-floor, 235,000-square- foot expansion—and what is being billed as the largest collection of contemporary art in the country. Crowds of curators and critics devour towering displays of sushi while bustling teams of bartenders pump overly adorned cocktails from dancer-topped bars to a veritable United Nations of art stars and the collectors who follow them around the globe. "Everyone is here for this," quips Armory Show Executive Director Benjamin Genocchio. "The entire international community from the lowliest art handler to the loftiest artists and curators came together to make this happen." The night before, all the heavies were descending on Fraenkel's party (celebrating his gallery's new Christian Marclay exhibition) at Mission Bowling Club, where Anselm Kiefer could be seen knocking down pins alongside SFMOMA Board President Bob Fisher, Mission School art legend Barry McGee and Bay Area-based photographer Katy Grannan. But tonight Fraenkel, who has almost single-handedly steered the Bay's bluest-chip collections deep into silver gelatin, is busy staring up at the museum's wave-like, fiberglass-reinforced polymer facade. "It seems to me that this building will be sending ripples out into this city," he says. "And it will change things." Like a giant asteroid that pulls a constellation of space debris into its orbit before entering the atmosphere, the May 14 landfall of the new SFMOMA undoubtedly attracted—or at the very least attracted attention to—a micro-galaxy of international galleries (Larry Gagosian, Pace, Anton Kern, Andrew Kreps), philanthropic endeavors (Minnesota Street Project, 500 Capp Street Foundation), entrepreneurial efforts (Untitled Art Fair) and institutional expansions (Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Asian Art Museum) touching down around the broader Bay Area. And this is to say nothing of the recent ventures by the city's top dealers—from the new FraenkelLab to Jessica Silverman helming a new project space and Yves Béhar's Fused Space to Claudia Altman Siegel's forthcoming Dogpatch digs and Ratio 3's Mission Street gallery—or the fact that the FOG Design + Art Fair has tripled attendance and is already attracting the likes of Marian Goodman, David Zwirner and David Kordansky in the three short years since the museum closed for renovations. "People always ask, 'Why San Francisco?' The real question is, 'Why not?'" says Jeff Lawson, who next January will launch a second edition of his Untitled Art Fair—which debuted during Art Basel Miami Beach in 2012—inside the historic shipbuilding terminal at Pier 70, dovetailing with FOG. "I know that sounds so simple but when you really look at it, there are so many reasons: the Bay Area has world-class cultural institutions, great hotels, fine restaurants, historic and contemporary architecture and a good mix of established and emerging collectors." Rather than fearing the addition of another fair, FOG steering committee member Douglas Durkin welcomes the notion. "This is actually very exciting as it means that there is a growing faith in the marketplace and culture here," says Durkin. "We have often mused about the idea that FOG would be the genesis of a dedicated art and design week here in the Bay Area, and there are now brewings of just that happening." This faith has even inspired the high priest of the market, Larry Gagosian, who just opened his 16th location in a relatively modest 4,500- square-foot ground-floor space (designed by Kulapat Yantrasast) at the Crown Point Press building. Just across the street from SFMOMA, it neighbors the space where veteran San Francisco dealer John Berggruen will relocate his operation after 45 years on Grant Avenue. Gagosian says, "It was the right time for San Francisco." Of course, timing isn't the only consideration. "We've had really established clients in San Francisco for a long time and there are obviously the young tech collectors, but that's not the driving force—it's more about being here," adds Anna Gavazzi Asseily, who left Gagosian London to serve as director of the new gallery. During a tour of the almost-ready space (as workers were busy painting floors and installing works to the walls) the day before Art Bash, she explains, "There's never a tipping point, but Larry saw the space and he loved it." For Pace's Marc Glimcher, who opened his 20,000-square-foot temporary Pace Art + Technology outpost inside a former Tesla showroom in February with 20 digital works from TeamLab, it was also a matter of location, location, location. Unlike Gagosian, however, Glimcher decided to plant roots two months later—with a permanent space—in a downtown Palo Alto location. "Silicon Valley represents the nexus of exploration and innovation," says Liz Sullivan, president of Pace Palo Alto. "It's where creativity meets advanced function, and art is an open discussion." They seemed to strike a chord: The Wednesday before Art Bash, Pace Palo Alto's inaugural show with James Turrell drew a line that extended out the door for two blocks. "When I first moved to San Francisco, the city felt like a snow globe. New Yorkers kept an eye on what was happening here but few actually came and stepped foot on Bay Area soil," says Jessica Silverman, whose exhibition of Isaac Julien's photographs about gay black desire from his award-winning Looking for Langston series drew everyone from Takashi Murakami to Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn and Noah Horowitz, Art Basel's Director Americas. "There is nothing more gratifying than people standing in your space, experiencing the real scale and sensuality of ambitious work." The question, then, is really not if something is happening in San Francisco—it is—but rather what all this activity will do to (and for) the city in the years to come as the cost of living continues to rise and techrification continues to displace more local artists. "The cost of living is a challenge, there's no question about it, and one of the things we all need to be concerned about is that San Francisco is not just a place where art is consumed but also created," says Neal Benezra, director of SFMOMA. He points to the Minnesota Street Project— an exhibition and studio complex (where 37 artists have already secured affordable spaces) developed by philanthropists Andy and Deborah Rappaport in the formerly down-at-the-heels Dogpatch district—as a possible model for the future. "Sometimes you have to think a bit outside of the box and yesterday there were so many curators here, the response was so positive," says Anton Kern, who staged a three-week pop-up exhibition (featuring works by Pae White, Anne Collier and Andrea Bowers, among others) with fellow New 226 culturedmag.com "I can obviously see there are things going on with Silicon Valley and people have a lot of money, but I don't want to think about this so much. I would rather focus on the art." —Anton Kern