I'm much more of a visual person than I
am a hearing person and
uh I started out after
school as a building contractor and
building homes and so forth
and architecture I think is Art um there
are a lot of things that are art in fact
I've had a big question that I've asked
the people of San Francisco moment
please describe what art is I think it's
very difficult there's all kinds of
things anything that that's done
creatively by people that is visual I
think is Art maybe there's more than
just that it's uh if you invent things
it's it's art but I've been a visual
person
and uh I naturally got into art and then
got into the clothing business which is
also visual which I I look as as an
artist's creativity in creating some of
our clothes or maybe all of our
clothes the point that I got involved in
art was when when I can afford to buy it
and I couldn't afford to buy anything
before that well the art basically
started in the early 70s and I started
the Gap in
1969 when we started collecting U with
Doris's really good friend Peggy Walker
she was sort of a an art advisor and
because she was Doris's best friend
she'd help us pick things out and figure
some artist that we thought we should
get involved with and that's how we
started we started collecting prints
which is really the best way to start
collecting because you really get good
artists and
good visual pieces at very low prices
compared to buying the real art as
our uh Financial assets grew we started
buying more and that's you know as I
look back right
now I should have bought
more but uh I think we bought pretty
wisely and we bought in depth and the
art artists that we liked we really
didn't buy artists we didn't like and it
was easy to like certain artists and the
ones that we have liked we've we've
bought over the years in in real depth
once we started buying it it you know
people get infected by by the idea of
the game and and purchasing and looking
around and we got to new no dealers and
whenever we went to New York we'd spend
time going to the dealers we go to the
museums over time you start
understanding what an artist is all
about you go to enough retrospective of
San Francis or lonstein you know what
you like you know the things that you
think are the best I I don't think you
could put the collection together that
we have
today um because number one the art
isn't available it's not as much just
being able to pay for it which in itself
is staggering today what's happened to
the art
prices but the art itself the really
good art is not available it's either in
Museum's hands or in private collectors
that aren't selling it John cwell got us
interested in number of the artists that
we've been collecting Sigmar
paa RoR uh those are the two that really
come to mind and we have an enormous RoR
collection and we have several poas but
not to the same extent the Bay Area is
probably as good as any other area in
the United States as far as collectors
are concerned I do believe that museums
have to have broader thinking than they
do today
to be relevant well I think an ideal
Museum would be a museum with a good
permanent
collection and with the ability and um
open-mindedness to have shows that are
uh of real interest to a a bigger
constituency to some extent I think
museums are elitist and I don't think
they should be I think because again
what's art and who's you know are we the
people that should Define what art is to
the
population or people's own mind of what
art is they should have the right to
make their own
decisions