1939 & 1959 Cafe & Art & even Joan Brown Again!

 --Ansel Adams’ 1939 photo of the School Café, now Studio 26, with student mural that shows scenes of students playing horseshoes, fencing in the courtyard, playing the piano, studying, a big group hug, and life in the Café showing  Grace “Morty” Morton, whose café and her home “never had a door unlocked to an artist who was hungry or needed a bed or a glass of wine.”

--And…in 1959…Coffee, smoking, talking, and some art work filled the Café in the late 1950s and early 1960s—including the artist Joan Brown, front and center……In 1961 the kitchen was refurbished in accordance with suggestions from Trader Vic, who also furnished “hot student lunches.”

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.

1931 & 1983 Diego Rivera and SFAI Students

In the early 1980s students thought that the red badge on Rivera’s worker had originally included the communist hammer and sickle symbol and that it had been painted over. One night they used the lift to reach this portion of the mural and painted a hammer and sickle onto the worker’s red badge.  This coincided with the Detroit Institute of Arts photographing the mural for their publication on Rivera.  Consequently, the book included the students’ hammer and sickle with writing that Rivera’s “left leaning politics is evident in the hammer and sickle he painted on the worker.”  In 1991 conservators Will Shank and Molly Lambert worked on the mural and reported that Rivera’s red badge had never included the hammer and sickle and that the students had performed their enhancement in toothpaste so it was easy to remove.  Diego would have been proud of these students.

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.

1958 Bill Morehouse, Folk Singers, Wiley, Hedrick, Sunglasses & Duchamp

Painting teacher, Bill Morehouse (on right) in Studio 13,  gives students an assignment to complete “at least 2 finished drawings of Folk Singers'' including “something in your drawings about what you SEE, FEEL, AND HEAR!!!”  In the foreground on the left is William T. Wiley, and in between him and the other folk guitarist you can make out the profile of Wally Hedrick…..and outfitted perfectly for the times is the student watching from the entrance, in sunglasses, Charlie Strong.  As a student in 1949, Morehouse had been working on a large non-objective painting when Marcel Duchamp visited the School.  Duchamp asked, “What are you doing there, young man?” to which Morehouse replied, “Frankly, I don’t know.”  Duchamp responded:  “Fine, fine, Keep up the good work.”

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.