1975 SFAI Poppy Poster, Alice Erskine, Whatever...

From the SFAI Library and Archives, in honor of spring and the aesthetics of 1970s poster design:

This poppy poster was sent folded in the mail to college and high school counselors in 1975. The text on the back by Dean of Admissions, Alice Erskine, explains SFAI’s participation in a study with the Institute for Personality Assessment and Research at UC Berkeley which collected a “tremendous amount of information” on the “visual acuity, the verbal intelligence, the imaginative power, the vocational preferences and psychological profile” of SFAI students, concluding that they possess “a far more vivid power of imagination than is perhaps the norm in America” and the ability to “create new things for new worlds.”

Stressing the importance of real-world experience, the application form for that year included a blank page where prospective students were to “describe at least one year of life experience beyond high school, including college work, travel, military or whatever.”

Or...whatever!

(Celebrating Year 104 of #sfai150!)

With permission, SFAA is re-posting the emails Jeff Gunderson Librarian/Archivist Anne Bremer Memorial Library has been sending out since March 2020. Please enjoy this magnificent archive.

1955 Beat Art, Dr. Wennesland, Ernest the Monkey, Norway

Dr. Reidar Wennesland and his monkey, Ernest, who became the first and only monkey to direct the school for one month in May 1955.

Dr. Wennesland was the physician of many Beat Era artists, accepting artworks in lieu of payment. A number of SFAI artists ended up in his impressive collection, including Jay DeFeo, Jess, Joan Brown, Leo Valledor, David Park, and Richard Diebenkorn. He eventually gifted the collection to two schools in his home country of Norway, the University of Agder and his high school alma mater, Kristiansand katedralskole, where they remain on view today. For his part, after his short-lived career as a college administrator, Ernest the monkey applied to be an astronaut in NASA’s nascent primate space program, but was rejected in the second round of cuts due to poor eyesight in one eye.

(Celebrating Year 84 of #sfai150!)

With permission, SFAA is re-posting the emails Jeff Gunderson Librarian/Archivist Anne Bremer Memorial Library has been sending out since March 2020. Please enjoy this magnificent archive.

1871 San Francisco Art Institute Sesquicentennial

From the SFAI Library and Archives: 150 years ago this week!

SFAI turned 150 on Sunday, but what exactly does that mean? These are the minutes of the San Francisco Art Association (SFAI before it was SFAI), which had its very first meeting on March 21, 1871. The gathering took place in the living room of a local painter named Juan Wandesforde and was attended by a group of local artists and “literary men” interested in promoting art in the city and on the West Coast. When asked to explain what they were doing there, Wadesforde “explained briefly that it was for the establishment of an artistic society the precise constitution of which would be determined by the general sense of the meeting.”

In other words, they weren’t really sure what they were doing! But over the course of the following months and years, they found themselves a permanent location, created a library, started putting on art exhibitions, and in 1874 founded a school that was the earliest incarnation of what is now SFAI.

With permission, SFAA is re-posting the emails Jeff Gunderson Librarian/Archivist Anne Bremer Memorial Library has been sending out since March 2020. Please enjoy this magnificent archive.