The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has announced that nine prominent Bay Area collectors have pledged 195 works of art to help kick off a multiyear campaign designed to strengthen the museum's collection.

The promised gifts from members of the campaign committee include major works by artists including Diane Arbus, Joseph Beuys, Robert Gober, Eva Hesse, Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly, Bruce Nauman, Jackson Pollock, Ed Ruscha, Cindy Sherman, and David Smith. "This first wave of promised gifts — from both longtime friends and a new generation of patrons — represents an extraordinary start to a multiyear campaign to expand and strengthen the art experiences we provide for the people of the Bay Area and audiences from around the world," said SFMOMA director Neal Benezra.

The pledges of art mark the public launch of the campaign, which was initiated on the museum's seventy-fifth anniversary in January 2009 and will continue through the opening of an expanded facility in 2016. In September 2009 SFMOMA announced a partnership with Doris and Don Fisher to bring the eleven hundred works in the Fisher Collection — one of the world's leading collections of contemporary art — to the museum.

"Along with my fellow committee members, I am thrilled to add to SFMOMA's exceptional collection," said campaign committee co-chair Helen Schwab. "We look forward to engaging many more collectors in this campaign, so that together we will guarantee unparalleled art experiences here in San Francisco for future generations."