On Tuesday, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted 11-0 to begin the process of designating a Diego Rivera mural as a landmark after the $ 50 million San Francisco Art Institute said it sold it would help pay $ 19.7 million of debt.
Designating the mural as a landmark would severely limit how the 150-year-old institution could leverage it, and the public authorities behind the measure say that probably selling it is out of the question for now. Removing the mural with a landmark status would require approval from the city’s Historic Preservation Commission, which has broad authority.
“There is a lot of money in this city,” said Aaron Peskin, a board member for the district where the institute resides and sponsor of the proposal. “There are better ways to get out of this mess than a stupid scheme to sell the mural.”
During a public hearing on the resolution on Monday, Art Institute officials objected to the idea. Pam Rorke Levy, chairman of the Art Institute’s board, said: “Marking the wall now, when there is no imminent threat of sale, without sufficient consideration of SFAI’s position would deprive SFAI of its main and most valuable asset.”
The 1931 work, entitled “The making of a fresco that shows the construction of a city”, is a fresco within a fresco. The painting depicts the creation of a city and a mural – with architects, engineers, artisans, sculptors and painters working hard. Rivera himself is seen from the back, holding a palette and a brush, with his assistants. It is one of the three frescoes in San Francisco by the Mexican muralist, who has had an enormous influence on other artists in the city.
Years of costly expansions and declining enrollments have put SFAI in a difficult financial situation, compounded by the pandemic and a loan default. Last July, a private bank announced it would sell the school’s collateral – including the Chestnut Street campus, the Rivera mural and 18 other works of art – before the University of California Board of Regents intervened to buy the debt in October . Through a new agreement, the institute has six years to repurchase the property; otherwise, the University of California would take over the campus.
Faced with the threat of foreclosure, school administrators sought out a suitable buyer, although Ms. Levy said that the “first choice of the school would be to provide the mural on site, attracting sponsors or a partner institution that would create a substantial fund that would would allow to preserve, protect and present the mural to the public. ”
Last month, Ms. Levy suggested two possibilities with board members and employees. One involved buying the mural by filmmaker George Lucas for the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles. (The museum said it would not comment on speculation about acquisitions.) Another would have seen the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art take ownership of the mural, but leave it on campus as an attached space.
But a spokeswoman for the museum said that nothing came from the first discussions. “We have no plans to acquire or endow the SFAI mural,” said SFMOMA communications officer Jill Lynch to The New York Times.
The school campus on Chestnut Street has been a designated landmark since 1977, but it was possible that, as part of the interior, the mural could have been sold or removed.
In the past few days, alumni and teachers have organized to oppose any sale of the mural. Among them was the famous artist Catherine Opie, who published an open letter condemning the actions of the school board and announcing the withdrawal of a photograph she planned to sell in a fundraiser for the institute.
“I can no longer be part of a legacy that will sell a unique and essential piece of history,” she wrote.
After hearing that the mural was likely to receive landmark status, Ms. Opie breathed a sigh of relief.
“I am thrilled and relieved,” she told The Times. “I’m tired of seeing leveraged art as an asset in the institutions’ first line of defense.”