Collectors Unveil Napa Art Cave

They unveiled the 5,700-square foot structure, along with an experiential water and sky sculpture by James Turrell installed in their outdoor swimming pool, at a party in October, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.

Commissioned in 2005, the light-filled structure, complete with a vaulted interior and steel entrance, was created by the New York architectural firm Bade Stageberg Cox, which says "there is nothing else like it in the world as a space to display art." The cave contains 25 installations that will be viewed by only 12 to 15 groups of friends, serious collectors, or high-level museum donors making museum-led trips to the Bay Area.

"We did it because we wanted to enjoy our art collection in a way we hadn't been able to," Norah, 69, chair of San Francisco Museum of Modern Art's Director's Circle, said. "We'll be changing the pieces every year." She also said that young artists tend to create pieces with museum exhibitions in mind that are too big to hang in a home.

"Our end game for collecting," said Norman, 68, a trustee at SFMoMA and son of late billionaire insurance magnate W. Clement Stone, "is to give it to museums. So to sell it wouldn't make a lot of sense to us."

Their art adviser, Thea Westreich in New York, has worked with the couple for 17 years. Among the pieces on view in the cave are a Richard Serra sculpture called Square Level Forged, a room of photographs surrounding a Keith Tyson bronze cube titled The Block, and Vito Acconci's Adjustable Wall Bra, a giant sculpture of a white bra with benches inside the cups for viewers to sit on while listening to a recording of a woman breathing. The private gallery is part of the Stones' compound, "Stonescape," which encompasses an outdoor sculpture by Cady Noland called Log Cabin Blank with Screw Eyes and Cafe Door and their 120-year-old farmhouse weekend retreat.