1934 Coit Tower and SFAI

Coit Tower,  designed by architect Arthur Brown who had also designed the 1926 SFAI building on Chestnut Street with its own signature tower includes a set of true fresco murals completed by numerous artists----almost all of whom had been students, faculty, and fellow travelers at the School. Victor Arnautoff, the Coit Tower mural project manager, was teaching at the School at this time, had been a student in the 1920s, and had also worked with Rivera in Mexico.  The Coit Tower murals were riddled with images of racial equality and pro-labor ideals leading to a very public attempt to censor them amidst the backdrop of the San Francisco General Strike of 1934 as well as the fallout of the destruction of Diego Rivera’s NYC Rockefeller Center mural the year before.

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.

1976c. 1991 Angela Davis SFAI Faculty

An array of fascinating non-studio faculty have taught at the School including Grace McCann Morley, the first Director of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, anthropologist Gregory Bateson, poet Kenneth Rexroth, writer Kenneth Lash, physicist Frank Oppenheimer, the founder of the Exploratorium, punk writer Kathy Acker and the renowned lecturer, Ray Mondini.  In 1976 Mondini hired activist and writer Angela Davis as a faculty member in the Humanities Department where over the next 15 years she would teach courses on ‘Marxism and Art’ and Women’s Studies, as well as lecturing on current events and world affairs.  Angela Davis taught at SFAI until the early 1990s when she joined the faculty at the University of California, Santa Cruz where she is now Professor Emeritus.

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.

1939 Sargent Johnson SFAI Artist

Sculptor, muralist, and public artist, Sargent Claude Johnson (studied 1919-1923; 1939-1940) was one of the first African-American artists from California to achieve a national reputation and the only West Coast artist considered a part of the Harlem Renaissance. Johnson worked as a supervisor for the Federal Arts Project of the WPA in San Francisco while executing major public art projects including a glazed tile relief at the Maritime Museum in Aquatic Park as well as sculpted the Vermont Granite at the building’s entrance. Johnson’s tile work was never completed because of a controversy with how the building was going to be privatized, and he walked off the job in protest.

He also completed an elaborate frieze depicting athletics at George Washington High School (highlighting women athletes, anticipating Title 9), as well as artwork at the 1939/1940 Golden Gate International Exhibition on Treasure Island. In 1944 he received the Rosenberg Travelling Scholarship administered by the School to travel, study, and do archaeological research in Mexico investigating the influence of color in ceramics.

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.