SAN FRANCISCO MUSEUM OF MODERN ART PLANS EXPANSION

Bucking the downward trend that has plagued the boardrooms of most museums during the recession, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art announced Thursday that it has raised $250 million over the past several months, allowing it to double the size of its endowment and put $150 million toward an ambitious expansion, reports Randy Kennedy for the New York Times.

The expansion is necessary partly because the museum is to be the home of the extensive art collection of Don and Doris Fisher, founders of the Gap clothing chain, who announced in September, shortly before Mr. Fisher’s death, that they would lend their works to the museum instead of placing them in the museum of their own they had planned to build in San Francisco’s Presidio park. 
The museum, which celebrated its seventy-fifth anniversary last month, also announced Thursday that the agreement for the Fisher loan would be extended from twenty-five years, as initially announced, to at least one hundred years. The works will be presented in a new wing along with works from the museum’s permanent collection and will also be interwoven throughout the museum’s other galleries beginning in June.

A search will now begin for an architect for the expansion, and the museum will continue to work toward raising a total of $480 million for the expansion and endowment.