San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Berkeley artist recalls struggle with S.F. Arts Commission over Angelou sculpture.
A candid interview with artist Lava Thomas on the politics & personal toll of the past year
Artist Lava Thomas opens up on the saga of her tribute to poet Maya Angelou.
I had a personal interest in telling the Shakespearean story of Lava Thomas and the San Francisco Arts Commission: I run a design studio, and she was one of my clients. I had followed the saga and read the reported pieces (including those by Heather Knight in The Chronicle) on the arts commision awarding and abruptly rescinding its offer for the Berkeleybased artist to create a monument to the late poet Maya Angelou for the San Francisco Public Library. But in my personal conversations with Thomas, I had a dawning awareness that much of the story hadn’t been told publicly. And I wanted to hear it directly from her.
In the conversation here, condensed and lightly edited for clarity, Thomas talks about local politics, bureaucracy, how the mostly white arts commission interfaces with the artists they claim to celebrate, and the lack of transparency in who gets to decide what “public art” means in San Francisco. But she also discusses the more fundamental human component: What it felt like to be enlisted and then dismissed by a public institution, and how, as a Black woman, she found her agency and voice with other Black women and an arts community that rallied to her side.
McCalman: I’ve read a lot about the Maya Angelou monument fiasco, but I haven’t heard a lot from you. I would just love to hear the sequence of events, as you remember it, to thread the beginning to the current part.
Thomas: (laughs) Oh gosh, that’s a long time. I was invited to apply to the request for qualifications (RFQ) for a sculpture to honor Dr. Angelou for the San Francisco Library. I didn’t plan to apply because I’m not known as a sculptor. But when I looked over the materials and I read the press that publicized the call, I realized very quickly that a statue wasn’t a requirement. In fact, the legislation that created the project had “statue” crossed out and “artwork” written in its place, and the paperwork that I received specified excellence in portraiture, not sculpture. I thought, well, I can use my expertise and body of work to inform this project, and decided upon a book form that has a portrait of Dr. Angelou on the cover.
I based my portrait on her 1973 interview with Bill Moyers when she actually lived in Berkeley. She wore a short afro and hoop earrings. I was looking for a representation of her that spoke to Black cultural pride and something that would be timeless and a way to introduce a new icon to the city. I also looked at the Benin Bronzes of West Africa and Elizabeth Catlett’s “Invisible Man,” a rectangularshaped monument to Ralph Ellison — really looking for a way to represent her that would challenge the primacy of neoclassical statuary in monuments. I wanted to give the city something new, something different, because Dr. Angelou was such an innovative, extraordinary person in her life and work: civil rights activist, the first Black woman cable car conductor in San Francisco, the first Black woman to direct a Hollywood movie, the first Black woman inaugural poet in U.S. presidential history — so many other firsts.
After the San Francisco Arts Commission put out a call in November 2018 for proposals for the Maya Angelou monument, 111 artists responded. In March 2019, Thomas was selected as a finalist along with New York artist Jules Arthur and East Bay artist Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle. The three were asked to develop formal proposals and present them to the selection panel in August.
Thomas: I didn’t expect to win, but I was hopeful. So when I got the call, I was just screaming! I can’t tell you how much joy I felt. The following week, I received a call from the project manager saying that my proposal would be approved at the next Visual Arts Committee meeting and that it was pretty much pro forma, the way that it happens with 99% of public art projects which come through the San Francisco Arts Commission. But instead, after the committee met, I got a call from the VAC chair telling me that my proposal wasn’t approved, that the project sponsor preferred a different proposal. I didn’t understand. So, finally I asked, “What exactly are you telling me?”
When I tried to find out why my proposal wasn’t approved, no one would give me any information. So I listened to the audio transcript of the meeting and something was clearly amiss. Then I listened to all of the audio transcripts and read the minutes for every meeting regarding the project. I went through all 161 pages of public comments and all the emails pertaining to the project that were available. I then wrote a scathing letter to the arts commission. I thought, “How dare you? How could you? How could this happen?” I had followed the guidelines, I had taken into consideration the scope of the project to the letter, and I won almost unanimously. This is just wrong. It’s just wrong.
Although the selection panel had chosen Thomas’ proposal, calling her piece “quietly radical,” Supervisor Catherine Stefani, who sponsored the legislation creating and paying for the monument, wanted a traditional statue. After Stefani said as much at the Visual Arts Committee meeting in October 2019, the committee chose none of the finalist proposals and opted to begin the process from scratch.
McCalman: So you were tasked with being your own detective in figuring out what happened because the commission wasn’t holding itself accountable at any point?
Thomas: There was no accountability. Nobody would speak to me, quite frankly. I was stonewalled.
(The project manager) and I were in contact with each other, but she didn’t have answers either. You have to remember, the staff execute the wishes of the commission. And they followed everything to the letter. But the commissioners and the Visual Arts Committee are all political appointees.
McCalman: Right, of the mayor.
Thomas: Yes, they serve at the pleasure of the mayor of San Francisco. The project was initially brought forward by former Supervisor Mark Farrell, and Supervisor Stefani inherited the project after Mark Farrell left. She changed the criteria for the project after the fact. She insisted on Dr. Angelou being honored with a traditional statue, in the same way that men have been honored in the city, weaponizing neoclassicism and European aesthetics, a very specific kind of statuary.
As the city began the proposal process anew, Thomas reached out to the arts community, artists, mentors and colleagues, trying to understand what had happened and what recourse she might have. She also began speaking publicly about the debacle, first at Ashara Ekundayo Gallery in Oakland alongside a member of the selection panel and another semifinalist.
Thomas: It was a standingroomonly crowd to talk about what happened and the implications, which were this: How is it possible that a white supervisor is dictating the representation of Dr. Angelou, shutting down the project, essentially erasing the creative and intellectual labor of not just myself and the artists who participated, but the decades of expertise by the selection panelists who included, for the first time in San Francisco’s his
tory, a critical mass of Black women equipped with the training, experience, expertise and education to make that selection? We were not having it. I mean it was crazy! It’s still very difficult to talk about it, because it was so outrageous!
And out of that panel at Ashara Ekundayo’s gallery, SeeBlackWomxn as a collective formed. That meeting was the beginning of that community’s response to what happened. I worked with SeeBlackWomxn to coordinate a campaign to abolish white supremacy at the SFAC, and with colleagues of mine around the country to boycott the new RFQ. Artists contacted me to ask if they could use my images for their applications. Yes, sure (laughs). The press was involved from the beginning, which is why I think the word got out as widely as it did. I wrote a letter of protest and withdrawal in March, right before the shutdown. The result of the shutdown meant that the Visual Arts Committee meetings and the full commission meetings could be attended virtually by anyone around the country. So here are all of the converging circumstances that made the reversal of that rejection possible and for justice to finally be served.
McCalman: That was in March 2020. And the lockdown was just starting. They’re displaying their previously not transparent meetings to the general public, and people all over the country could now witness the process.
Thomas: Yes, now anyone (could) join the meeting remotely. And then a few months later, in the wake of Breonna Taylor’s murder, George Floyd’s murder, Ahmaud Arbery’s murder and Black Lives Matter protests, monuments to white supremacy were being toppled all over the world. Around Juneteenth monuments were being toppled in Golden Gate Park, and Black Lives Matter protesters threatened to pull down Christopher Columbus’ monument — that’s when monuments resurfaced in Bay Area consciousness. After Francis Scott Key’s monument was defaced, and the city of San Francisco had to remove Christopher Columbus’ monument at Coit Tower, the mayor called for an audit of San Francisco’s monuments to determine which were deemed reflective of the city’s values and which ones should come down. I believe it was Heather Knight who reported. She followed this from the very beginning.
During the Visual Arts Committee meeting in July, when they were addressing white supremacy in monuments in San Francisco, I read a statement essentially saying, “You have to address the systemic racism inherent in this decision to reject my proposal and to shut down and restart the Maya Angelou project. You have to address this first.” And I was cut off. SFAC’s website says that you have three minutes to make comments. So I timed my statement for three minutes, but when the meeting started you had just two minutes. So I tried to read my statement as quickly as I could (laughs). But it was a threeminute statement, and at the twominute mark, I was cut off. And outrage ensued. I couldn’t believe, honestly, that after all of the controversy, after all of the disrespect, after all of the disregard, that the chair of the Visual Arts Committee would not just say: “Let’s give Lava 20 seconds to finish her statement.” She had been an advocate and a supporter of my proposal, but at the same time, I realized her hands were tied. Now, it was within her power to do the right thing, but no one would do the right thing.
After I was cut off and it was covered by the press, the arts commissioners wanted to talk to me (laughs). All of a sudden it’s, “I’m sorry.” And only because it was covered by the press and eventually covered by the New York Times. The fiasco had been covered by Hyperallergic, ArtNews and the Art Newspaper, which is an international art journal. In the art world, I was learning just how widespread this story was. Which was wonderful because I had so much support. There were so many disparate communities that reached out. Folks were outraged that something like this could happen in San Francisco, and that on the face of it, it was so blatantly … wrapped up in white supremacy. Getting cut off during the July VAC meeting and not being allowed to finish my statement just emphasized that.
I don’t know how many people used their public comment time to say, “Lava should be able to finish her statement.” Over and over and over. When I think about it now, you have to laugh about these things, otherwise the anger will tear you up inside.
McCalman: Yeah! You’ll sorta just wake up and go to bed crying. I remember it just being part of the larger conversation that was suddenly happening, and it was just a reverberation of this same kind of story.
Thomas: Yes. It was the politics of the time, and it was in response to folks just being sick and tired of the ways that white supremacy manifests itself, not just in the murders of innocent Black people, but also the way that Black people within all institutions — if they’re nonBlack institutions — shoulder the brunt of white supremacy in so many different ways. And here in the Bay Area, which has the reputation for being one of the most progressive in the country, it happens in large and small ways, too. Because this happened so publicly, the public face of this is driven by my insistence for redress and restorative justice, my challenge to white supremacy, and Black women’s challenge to white supremacy. But there was also so much political power invested in how this all unfolded; it would be nice to get to the bottom.
McCalman: Well, you’re getting to the bottom of this right now. This conversation pokes holes in this kind of satisfaction that Bay Area liberals have about the Bay Area and the story they have about how progressive San Francisco is versus what it actually is. But this is also a story about city bureaucracy and politics and how it interferes with the public discourse about public arts. That you have this organization that is ostensibly about public art that is running in a way that is not transparent.
Thomas: This situation really speaks to an epic failure of liberalism. When the project was being conceived, there wasn’t a single Black arts professional, a single Black historian, a single Black artist consulted. You can’t conceive of a monument project to honor one of the most exceptional Black women of our time and not include Black people —
Black women — with the requisite expertise in the project’s creation and planning, before the project is rolled out to the public.
With the media attention, Thomas received offers of private funding to create her monument elsewhere in San Francisco. In August, the arts commission apologized to Thomas, and during a private Zoom call later, Mayor London Breed and Supervisor Stefani both apologized. In November, the arts commission voted to end its second call for proposals and award the contract to Thomas.
Thomas: It was a coordinated effort to galvanize artists to speak out against what happened. Because artists don’t get a lot of reward, especially in the Bay Area. It’s one of the most expensive places for us to live. It’s hard to be an artist here. So I wasn’t just speaking out on my own behalf, I was speaking on behalf of all artists. If it can happen to me, it can happen to anybody, and it had been happening to artists for a very long time with no recourse at all.
So, during that meeting with the full commission, I read a 10minute statement which was followed by two hours of public comments. That has never happened in the history of the San Francisco Arts Commission. And that meeting was covered by the New York Times, The Chronicle, all of these papers. When the story broke, people were calling me to figure out how to fix it.
McCalman: Amazing! Thomas: Folks were asking me, “If you were offered this, would you take it?” And my initial reaction was, no, not after everything I’ve gone through with the arts commission. No, I absolutely would not consider creating a monument to Maya Angelou in San Francisco.
McCalman: I’ll admit, I was surprised when I heard that you decided that you were going to do it. I’m curious what the process of getting there was for you. Thomas: I mean, I am gratified that Supervisor Stefani, that Mayor Breed reversed the rejection. But it took a lot to get to this point, and I was angry about it for a very long time. How are you going to honor Dr. Angelou by disrespecting Black women, by erasing the labor of Black women through political maneuvering and government overreach? Let’s just call it what it is — using the tools of white supremacy to erase the work of everyone who was involved in the first RFQ. I followed all of the requirements to the letter, and my selection was nearly unanimous, and you’re going to do this? And think I’m not going to say anything or do anything?
McCalman: But that’s white supremacy too: the expectation that there’s no recourse.
Thomas: But, you know, it’s also political power and politicians believing that they have ultimate power and that artists have no power. I’m just super proud of the way that communities stood up and spoke out. I certainly did not know how any of this was going to turn out. I didn’t know that I would have so much support and advocacy.
McCalman: I think also the subject matter, and your subject, would not have had it any other way. Thomas: That’s true. One of the things I’ve always maintained is that, as best as I can, I have tried to uphold the principles that Dr. Angelou stood for. And the first among those is justice. So to let this injustice fly was just not an option for me. There were so many times that I just wanted to throw my hands up and say, “OK, I’m done. It’s not worth my time, it’s certainly not worth the stress involved.” The arts community was outraged and answered in kind and insisted on transparency, insisted on the process being treated with integrity, insisted upon the lens of racial and cultural equity. And now the Arts Commission is finally rewriting its policies. They’ve also hired a new director of cultural affairs.
McCalman: What was it like getting an apology from Mayor Breed? Thomas: Honestly, at the time I thought it was the least that she could have done. She went into the meeting apologetic, wanting a positive outcome, and I appreciated that. I appreciated that she wanted to come to a positive resolution. I appreciated that Catherine Stefani apologized. But at that time it was difficult for me to think about working with people who were responsible for what happened. I couldn’t answer for three weeks. I had still not decided what I wanted to do going forward, and the offer wasn’t made to reverse the decision.
McCalman: So, tell me, why did you decide to do this again? Thomas: I realized two things, equally important. One thing that I realized was that the city of San Francisco was going to have a monument to honor Dr. Angelou. It was mandated through legislature, the funding was there. It was just a matter of which artist was going to do this. And I realized that — and this took time — if another artist had erected it, it would have been a forever reminder of how I had been treated. I didn’t want that. I didn’t want all of City Hall, I didn’t want the San Francisco (Public) Library to become a place that was a reminder of the injustice, hypocrisy and disrespect — the antithesis of what Dr. Angelou exemplified.
And with that, I also realized that I had a responsibility to this idea of justice. Justice, courage, equity, integrity and an end to white supremacy, those are the principles that Dr. Angelou stood for. Creative freedom as viewed by artists, not dictated by politicians and certainly not dictated by tenets of white supremacy. I realized that if I were committed to upholding her principles throughout this process, that if the city reversed their course, reached out in conciliation and approved my proposal, that I had a responsibility to create it. Mayor Breed appointed Denise BradleyTyson as interim director of cultural affairs, and Ms. BradleyTyson was instrumental in arriving at this outcome. It really took a village, and a willingness by everyone involved to move forward in good faith.
So, that’s where I am. It is still very much a process to get to a point where I feel overwhelmingly happy about it. I’m happy, but it’s a reserved kind of happiness.