Art-filled ranch donated
The Sonoma County Community Foundation tours the "Tower" by Ann Hamilton on the Oliver Ranch in Geyserville.
KENT PORTER / PDPublished: Sunday, May 9, 2010 at 6:55 p.m.
Last Modified: Sunday, May 9, 2010 at 6:55 p.m.
Bay Area arts patrons Steve and Nancy Oliver are partnering with the Community Foundation Sonoma County to ensure that their world-renowned sculpture ranch in Geyserville will remain available to the public in perpetuity.
Oliver's 100-acre ranch has drawn international attention, both for the caliber of the artists represented and for the meticulous way each piece is integrated within the landscape.
An East Bay construction company magnate, Oliver has served on the boards of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Smithsonian Institution. He acknowledged that the decision about how and to whom he would entrust his legacy, was “a little awkward” given his many ties in the art world.
Others courted his ranch, with its singular collection of 18 site-specific installations created by some of the world's leading artists, from Richard Serra and Robert Stackhouse to Andy Goldsworthy and Miroslaw Balka.
Bruce Nauman, whose quarter-mile cast-concrete staircase ribbons from the road up a hillside to Oliver's ranch home, is widely regarded as one of the most influential artists of the 20th century.
Oliver announced the formation of the new foundation during a special tour last Friday for Community Foundation donors.
“We decided it was best to be in a place where local people could be proud of it and not where the smarties from the city came and told them how to do things,” he said. “I really decided it should be, as much as it could be, under local control.”
The Oliver Ranch Foundation will be a “supporting organization” to the Community Foundation, an arrangement that will give it more tax and regulatory benefits than it would have as a separate entity, said Community Foundation President and CEO Barbara Hughes.
Oliver made his comments while standing within his latest acquisition, a concrete tower by Ann Hamilton with twin staircases coiling up the center in a double helix.
The tower is a key component of Oliver's ongoing mission to make the ranch available to nonprofit organizations for fundraising. Many sell tickets for special tours or offer tours as auction prizes, usually led by Oliver himself.
The tower was created as a unique performance space, with one staircase serving as the stage and the other as audience seating. On June 19, Actor Michael York will perform selections from Henry V in the tower as a benefit for Santa Rosa's 6th Street Playhouse.
Setting aside the ranch for the public benefit with local control is a major coup, said local philanthropist Jean Schulz.
“The Oliver Ranch is a priceless asset in the Sonoma County arts and culture scene that, by its singular presence and renown, lifts all other arts organizations higher,” she said.
Schulz, a founder and emeritus board member of the Community Foundation, will serve on the board of the Oliver Ranch Foundation along with Oliver and his wife, Nancy. Other board members will include foundation CEO Hughes and John Mackie, a Santa Rosa attorney and major arts supporter who has served on the board of the Wells Fargo Center.
Mackie, who called Oliver Ranch “one of the most significant” art collections in the country, said the property is being slowly gifted in pieces to the new foundation, with the Olivers retaining rights to live there for the remainder of their lives.
Each piece of art is commissioned, created and sited specifically within the ranch, set on a hillside overlooking the Alexander Valley.
Artists spend extended periods of time living on the ranch in a guest house designed by San Francisco architect Jim Jennings, a structure that itself has won wide acclaim from architectural critics.
Hughes said the Olivers have set aside enough funds in a permanent endowment to maintain the ranch for the public benefit in perpetuity. Operating costs now run about $300,000 a year, she said.
The Olivers purchased the ranch in 1981. Serious art lovers, they became disillusioned with how art was being pursued more as a financial investment than for its intrinsic value. So they began collaborating with renowned artists to create works so intimately sited to the ranch, both structurally and artistically, that they could not be moved.
“So much effort went into this,” Oliver said, explaining his motivation to ensure that the collection is protected for the enjoyment and benefit of the public. “In many cases the artists themselves consider these their seminal pieces. I think I have an obligation to protect them.”
You can reach Staff Writer Meg McConahey at meg.mcconahey@pressdemocrat.
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