“Friends of Diego” Newsletter
June 2025
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:
On the left side the image of Walter Haas, Jr. kneeling had a different look. Remembering an Elise Haas oral history, we were able to confirm that Walter only wanted into the mural belatedly and had to be added. One of a series of Ansel Adams photos (included in the exhibit), showed Walter being painted last. To me it seems, Rivera had used a slightly brighter palette and put Walter in a sharper focus than the children in the foreground [left to right, “Dega” (Rhoda’s imaginary friend), Peter E. Haas, and Rhoda Haas.] Elise, daughter of Levi-Strauss owner Rosalie Stern, was the children’s mother. A favorite essay in Spanish about this mural is Alegoría Californiana by UC Berkeley emeritus Spanish/Portuguese professor Julio Ramos.
[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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Our last newsletter referred to an exhibition of Elizabeth Catlett, ‘Elizabeth Catlett: Black Revolutionary Artist’ At National Gallery Of Art at the National Gallery. Almost immediately I got an exhibition “care package” from Helen Pinto, a former CCSF mural docent and now employed by the National Gallery. The show catalog and other ephemera will become part of our expansive Diego Rivera Collection. CCSF librarians have invited me and we will soon meet to discuss the future disposition of the collection. Congratulations, Helen!
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.
Dudley Carter & The Mountain Ram, Photo: Hank Ingwersen, June 4, 1940, Bancroft BANC PIC 1959.010:39010.4:8 (used by permission granted July 22, 2002)
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.
There are plans for a new Frida Kahlo museum, the Museo Casa Kahlo, to open on September 27, 2025. The new museum will be a couple of blocks away from the Casa Azul. This may be the new house set up for her folks after Diego purchased the Casa Azul from them. In late May 1931 Frida left San Francisco early to prepare this house and ready the Casa Azul for the impending visit of Emily Joseph, Diego’s translator in San Francisco.
Into this window Frida shoe-horned her first affair, meeting up with photographer Nicholas Muray. She had been married to Diego less than two years but had seen the writing on the wall about his fidelity. This relationship with Nick would last almost a decade and most likely started in New York, not Mexico City, as most believe. My essay on this event awaits one more piece of evidence.
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,…”]
Nick,
I love you like I would love an angel.
You are the lily of the valley my love
I will never forget you, never, never
You are my whole life
I hope you will never forget this
Frida—
May 31, 1931
Coyoacán
Abrazos,
Will
April 2025
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.
The new installation was again handled by Atthowe, Sheedy Crane, and Nichols Concrete. This crew moved the Pan American Unity mural to SFMOMA, returned it to storage at CCSF, and will eventually install the mural in the new Diego Rivera Theatre. (Preservation Arts cleaned and touched up the head.)
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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.
Anne was a principal conservator on Pan American Unity, Coit Tower, Lucien Labaudt’s San Francisco Scenes murals at the Beach Chalet, the Maritime Museum murals, and Reuben Kadish’s A Dissertation on Alchemy (1937) at the old SF State College in the Haight. Recently, a Mexican mural by Kadish, Philip Guston, and Jules Langsner was restored and unveiled in Morelia.
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)
Joanne B. Mulcahy‘s book on Marion Greenwood is just out and I look forward to reading about this artist who worked in México with Diego around the time that George Gershwin visited in 1935. Joanne had confirmed to me that Marion’s presence figured in the story of Frida and Isamu Noguchi’s encounter at that time.
Elizabeth Catlett, ‘Elizabeth Catlett: Black Revolutionary Artist’ At National Gallery Of Art. This artist walked the walk and it was my great privilege to give her and her husband Mexican artist Francisco Mora a tour of Pan American Unity in 1999.
Mary Reynolds and her partner Marcel Duchamp took Frida into their home in 1939, when the Mexican artist became ill on her visit to Paris for an exhibition. Frida, who was acerbic in her opinion of André Breton, had very nice things to say about the couple. The Art Institute of Chicago has a show currently running curated by Caitlin Haskell about this encounter. In 2018 Caitlin curated one of my all-time favorite exhibitions, SFMOMA’s René Magritte: The Fifth Season.
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,
Will
There is some redundancy as we try to make every newsletter stand-alone.
“There is a pool of good. No matter where you put in your drop, the whole pool rises.”