Pier 24
10 Jun
If you hadn’t seen this news yet – Vast photo collection shown in SF warehouse:
Pilara, 68, has built a collection of 20th century American documentary photography so vast and comprehensive that he had to rent a vacant warehouse on the Embarcadero just to display it.Located below the Bay Bridge, Pier 24 offers 28,000 square feet of display space. To put that in perspective, it is four times the size of the photography galleries on the third floor of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, one of the largest dedicated photography spaces at any museum in the United States.
To visit Pier 24 is free if you make an appointment. Pilara has bought 2,000 vintage pictures and opened the single largest venue for looking at photography in this city and this state and this country. It is not a museum, because there are no boards or committees or docents or fundraisers. It is not a commercial gallery, because nothing is for sale.
300 out of the collection of 2,000 photos are shown in any given show (check out the walkthrough, it’s impressive), and he seems to display the works without the title cards. The idea is to get the viewer to concentrate on the worker rather than the name and personality. I wonder if the strict appointment-only set up is supposed to also give viewers the optimal experience, or if it’s something else.
When the article came out, the website was still under construction, but as of now, anyone can make an appointment to visit online, as an individual, group or institution. I’ll be travelling for the next couple of weeks, so I won’t be able to rush in to give first impressions, but Bay Area folk, reserve your slots!
Ancillary question: will there ever be an article written about the art world without the use of a $ in the mainstream media?
