The newly renovated San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMA) could be a potential shot in the arm for the Bay Area art market. In March, Pace Gallery opened a new permanent space in Palo Alto and the Gagosian Gallery announced plans to open a new space this month right across the street from SFMoMA.
However, the long-time local dealer John Berggruen, who is moving next door to Gagosian’s space, is quick to downplay the idea that the market there is booming. “There are some great top-tier, second-tier and third-tier collections here, but many of those people are getting to be a little older, and some of them are getting to be very dead,” he says.
Pace Gallery’s Marc Glimcher agrees, although he adds that speculation regarding Silicon Valley’s tech boomers beginning to collect art could be well founded. “People who move our society in a direction tend to end up being the people who are the most important supporters of the arts,” he says, “that’s always been true.”
Galleries aside, there are a great many other reasons to visit the Bay Area. The collectors Andy and Deborah Rappaport opened the Minnesota Street Project in March, designed for a dozen galleries and 30 artist studios. The University of California’s Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive opened a new location in downtown Berkeley in January, and the Untitled art fair, known for its Miami edition, recently announced that it would launch an iteration in San Francisco in January 2017.
And SFMoMA is not the only significant museum shake-up in the Bay Area. In June, Max Hollein, the former head of the Städel Museum in Frankfurt, will take over as director of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
All that remains to be seen is if collectors will be as quick to emerge as these new galleries.