Daily Archives: March 21, 2014

Candlestick Park is proof that San Francisco can get nostalgic about anything. A strange monument to a bygone peoples failed futurism, the former home of the Giants and 49ers is built of old-time patronage and reinforced concrete, located near an abandoned shipyard turned Superfund site. A few turns out of the stadium parking lot and youre in Bayview-Hunters Point, a long-neglected, predominantly black neighborhood where pollution from the Navys radiological lab and a local power plant have resulted in high rates of cancer and asthma. Candlestick was the backdrop to my childhood, says Kevin Epps, a local filmmaker who first documented the neighborhoods struggles in 2003s Straight Outta Hunters Point. But its like a one-sided relationship. The Niners got all the love, but in terms of opportunities for the community, there was none.

Isolated on the southeastern tip of San Francisco, the flatlands and repurposed barracks of Hunters Point were largely unaffected by the citys late-1990s boom, its Third Street artery dominated by liquor stores and shuttered windows. Epps began noticing changes along 3rd as he filmed his 2011 sequel. In 2007, the city linked the neighborhood to the rest of San Francisco with light-rail service, sprucing up Third with palm trees and public art. The first new grocery store in decades opened two years ago. It looks weird, Epps says. Its like some people are still trapped in time as the scenery is changing.

The thing about gentrification is how intuitive it appears in retrospecthow the answer was always nearby, as soon as that first person looked at a warehouse and saw somewhere to live. There are more bars, cafs, and young professionals, Epps jokes, from Boston and New York. Plans are under way here for the citys most ambitious redevelopment project since 1906, when an earthquake decimated San Francisco. Over the next decade, waterfront condos, retail space, and parks will go up where Candlestick once stood. The toxic and long-abandoned Hunters Point naval shipyard will finally be decontaminated and replaced by environmentally responsible development. Those who move into the 10,000 new mixed-income residential units will know this place by a new name: the San Francisco Shipyard.

San Francisco is too expensive for ruins. The last time I went to a 49er game, a friend showed me a shortcut to Candlestick. As we approached from the southwest, it felt like we were cutting through unmapped lands: fields of flagging reeds, a maze of dirt-lined back roads. It was like driving into the past. Even as the city had changed, tailgating before a Niner game still drew an eclectic multitude, from tech oligarchs perched on crates of wine to acid-casualty bikers to the melting pot of slangy young smokers. It felt like one of the last places in the city where the rich and the poor sat next to each other, everyone holding their phones to the sky in search of a signal.

Original post:
San Franciscos Hunters Point: A Wasteland Repaved

Already anticipating this generational changing of the guard, some museums are racing to pursue younger donors and trustees.

At the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, 75 percent of the board membership has turned over in the last seven years. That has brought new life to the Walker, which focuses on modern and contemporary art. But it has also meant the loss of several stalwarts who could be relied on for big checks and sage advice.

"Most of the oldest generation has completely gone off," said the Walker's director, Olga Viso. In its place, Ms. Viso said, a group of trustees in their 50s and 60s has moved into senior leadership roles and begun giving at higher levels, while a younger group of trustees in their early 40s and even late 30s has joined the board.

Among the more youthful members Ms. Viso has recruited of late are John Christakos, founder of the furniture company Blu Dot, who is in his late 40s and serves as the Walker board's treasurer, and Monica Nassif, the founder of the fragrance and cleaning companies Caldrea and Mrs. Meyers Clean Day.

As well as being proactive, another way to attract young donors and trustees is to be a cultural powerhouse. Many prominent art museums in major metropolitan areas, in particular, are so far navigating this transition with ease.

"The very big institutions are doing very well," said Ms. Robinson of the Museum Group. "They have a gravitational field."

Take the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which has well-oiled machinery for cultivating young patrons and turning the exceptional ones into trustees at MoMA or its sister institution, PS1.

"We've been doing this since 1949," said Todd Bishop, MoMA's senior deputy director of external affairs. That was the year that it set up the Junior Council, a group for young patrons. MoMA refreshed the effort in 1990 with the founding of the Junior Associates, a membership group open to those 40 years old and younger.

At a recent Junior Associates event, about 50 young patrons gathered to sip white wine in the museum's lobby after work, giant Brice Marden paintings looming over the makeshift bar. The occasion was a private tour of MoMA's retrospective of the German sculptor Isa Genzken, hardly the most accessible show.

After 45 minutes of schmoozing, the Junior Associates dutifully followed Laura Hoptman, the curator, on a walk-through of the sometimes jarring exhibition. Ms. Hoptman spoke of Ms. Genzken's "physicalization of sound waves" and the artist's battles with depression.

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Museums seek a new generation of donors