Top art school says future hinges on a Rivera mural
San Francisco Art Institute’s fresco is valued at $50 million
The San Francisco Art Institute was close to losing its campus and art collection to a public sale last fall, when the University of California Board of Regents stepped in to buy its $19.7 million of debt from a private bank, in an attempt to save the 150-year-old institution from collapse.
The agreement provides a lifeline, but the future of a beloved artwork a mural by Diego Rivera worth $50 million, which officials say could help balance the budget is still up in the air, and faculty and former students are outraged.
The 1931 work, titled “The Making of a Fresco Showing the Building of a City,” is a fresco within a fresco. The tableau portrays the creation of both a city and a mural with architects, engineers, artisans, sculptors and painters hard at work. Rivera himself is seen from the back, holding a palette and brush, with his assistants. It is one of three frescoes in San Francisco by the Mexican muralist, who was an enormous influence on other artists in the city.
Years of costly expansions and declining enrollment at the institute have put it in peril, a situation that has worsened during the pandemic.
The school has stressed that no final decision has been made to sell the mural. But behind the scenes, administrators and the institute’s leaders are strongly pushing to do so, as it would pay off debts and allow them to make ends meet for an annual operating budget that typically runs around $19 million.
In a Dec. 23 email that was sent to staff members and obtained by The New York Times, Jennifer Rissler, vice president and dean of academic affairs, acknowledged that a number of people had expressed concern over the possible sale of the mural. She added that “the board voted, as part of their fiduciary duty to explore all options to save SFAI, to continue exploring pathways and offers for endowing or selling the mural.”
At a Dec. 17 board meeting, the SFAI chairperson, Pam Rorke Levy, said filmmaker George Lucas was interested in buying the mural for the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles. Details of that discussion were provided by an attendee who asked for anonymity because the attendee was not authorized to discuss internal matters.
Speaking with faculty members on Dec. 17, Levy detailed another plan, in which the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art would take ownership of the mural but leave it on campus as an annexed space, said Dewey Crumpler, an associate professor at the school.
A spokesperson for the institute, Sara Fitzmaurice, founder of public relations firm Fitz & Co., declined to discuss ongoing negotiations regarding the possible sale. “A number of conversations have been taking place with several institutions about the possibility to endow or acquire the mural to ensure the future of the school,” she said in a statement.
In an interview last March, Levy said that she would be receptive to selling the painting. “When you have an asset that’s that valuable, there’s always a discussion,” she said. “As a small college in an expensive town, we are feeling the pain.”
Faculty and staff members have repeatedly raised objections. The latest rebuttal came in a Dec. 30 letter sent to the school community from a union representing its adjunct teachers, nearly 70 of whom were laid off during the pandemic but who previously made up the majority of the faculty.
“The Diego Rivera mural is not a commodity whose identity and worth resides exclusively in its market valuation,” reads the letter, saying that while its sale would resolve immediate financial shortfalls, “this would provide only a limited lifeline, and does not address patterns of misbehavior and mismanagement