Dear Friends of Diego,
City College’s treasured 14-ton Olmec head has been relocated next to the new STEAM building. It was a bit of Déjà vu, several of the original players were back from 2004 when it was first installed next to the old Diego Rivera Theatre. (I will miss the “Frida Blue” walls.)
The photo on the left is from 2004 as we fine-tuned the orientation of the head prior to touch down. The 2025 photo on the right; (left-right) CCSF Police Sargent Donald Quintana, Will in his original 49er hoodie, and Atthowe CEO Bryan Cain. (Atthowe rigger Esteban Granados was not available for the second photo.) The late Ignacio Perez Solano sculpted the replica head in México and came to San Francisco to inscribe the back of the head and to attend the dedication ceremony.
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“El Rey”, Olmec head replica at City College. This is a one minute “detail” video of the 9-foot high, 14-ton replica of the eponymous 3000-year-old Olmec head by Maestro Ignacio Pérez Solano (1931-2021)
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Here is a 23-minute abridged version of the Documentary by filmmaker Bill Dierssen. The head was a 2004 gift from the state of Veracruz, México.
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Here is a link to the Olmec head in 3-D
Atthowe’s next project at City College will be to install the Robert B. Howard Whales, another legacy of the 1939-40 Golden Gate International Exposition and last seen at the San Francisco Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park. Here is a photo of art conservator Anne Rosenthal as an eight-year-old and her late father Joe Rosenthal, the Pulitzer Prize winning photographer of the Marine flag raising on Iwo Jima. He would later teach at City College.
The Celebration for the late Scott Atthowe was a wonderful testimonial to all the work done by Scott and his company as a great many of his friends gathered in Berkeley. There were a lot of people who hadn’t seen each other in years. Ran into Allison Cummings, Senior Registrar, Civic Art Collection and Public Art | San Francisco Arts Commission. We realized how many years we’d been working on getting the Whales installed. Encountered conservator Niccolo Caldararo, who years ago conserved our Diego Rivera’s Self-Portrait lithograph, a gift to our CCSF Rivera Collection from the estate of Mona Hofmann. The Collection was curated by my late research partner Julia Bergman. Art conservator Kiernan Graves told me about a 6 inch “sample” of the painted-over Maxine Albro murals in LA that she had recently uncovered at the Ebell Club. Maxine Albro was one of the Coit Tower muralists (AAA oral interview). Kiernan is working with a large group of volunteers in LA as they try to save art rescued from the disastrous fires. As previously reported, Anne and Kiernan recently restored the Victor Arnautoff murals at the old Palo Alto Medical Clinic.
(The Ebell of Los Angeles)
In doing research recently for a California Humanities talk at the City Club, I came across John Crosse’s blog about José Clemente Orozco. (How had I missed it, John?) Though I had known that Orozco first came to the US in 1917, I was unaware of all the time that he had spent in San Francisco. He even hung out on the “Monkey Block”, now the footprint of the Transamerica Pyramid. Wonder if he made it to Dolores Park on a sunny day?
Abrazos,
“There is a pool of good. No matter where you put in your drop, the whole pool rises.”