Photo courtesy of Atthowe’s Alexander Jackson.
Dear Friends of Diego,
One of Diego Rivera’s early local works is finally back on public display. Our friends at Atthowe recently installed Still Life and Blossoming Almond Tree in UC Berkeley’s Doe Library on April 1, 2025, nearly 94 years after Diego painted it. The mural which had previously been inaccessible at UC’s Stern Hall, was removed and conserved in 2022 for SFMOMA’s Diego Rivera’s America exhibition.
My September 2022 newsletter talked about the mural’s restoration:
[Rosalie Stern, as president of the San Francisco Playground Commission, tithed much of the land on which City College sits.]
Out at the renovation of the old SF Art Institute, “Public access to Diego Rivera’s iconic mural The Making of a Fresco Showing the Building of a City (1931) will also be prioritized and maintained,” per an Art Newspaper article dated March 24, 2025. That mural was conserved prior to SFAI closing and is in terrific condition.
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Owners of deserted San Francisco art campus seek city approval for planned renovation to historic property
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Sometimes, connections don’t come into my mind until after the newsletter has already gone out. In speaking about Joe Rosenthal last time, I forgot to mention that after WWII, he taught photography at City College. Here is a 1951 photo of him with the staff of the Guardsman, City College’s newspaper. How many students get Pulitzer prize winners as their instructor
At the new Student Success Center, Dudley Carter’s The Mountain Ram was aligned by Atthowe to direct our attention to the future Diego Rivera Theatre across the street. Here, as it was carved at the Fair, it faced Diego’s mural.
Diego arrived in San Francisco the day after the above picture was taken and immediately centered three images of Dudley Carter in the mural’s first sketch. Carter’s rough-hewn style was very evocative of Diego’s friend, sculptor Mardonio Magaña, another character in the Pan American Unity mural. At the just opened Fair Dudley was so far ahead on this project that he was asked to do another piece. This Goddess of the Forest, though not referenced in the mural, will reside with the mural in the new Diego Rivera Theatre.
The Robert B. Howard Whales, another legacy from the 1939-40 Golden Gate International Exposition, were recently installed at the new CCSF Student Success Center. Though currently covered, they will be unveiled with the impending opening of the new building. The installation work was again done by Atthowe and Sheedy Crane. The extensive and stunning rehabilitation of the Whales was done by ARG directed by Jennifer Correia.
On May 31, 1931: Diego signed his San Francisco Art Institute mural; Hungarian-American Nick Muray came in third in New York competition to make the 1932 US Olympic fencing team; and after their first encounter in the US Frida wrote her torrid love letter in bad Hungarian to Nick from Mexico City [translation below.]. Guillermo Kahlo likely had a Hungarian dictionary handy. [In a portrait Frida wrote, “I painted my father Wilhelm Kahlo, of Hungarian-German origin,…”]
