Mural Conservation San Francisco.
A Mathews mural is in limbo
The center panel includes Apollo and the muses, plus Hygeia, goddess of health.
ARTHUR MATHEWS CREATED his three-panel mural
Health and the Arts in
1912 for what is now the Health Sciences Library in San Francisco. It
has hung there for more than a century. Now the library has gone
digital, disposed of its books and put its classical home in Pacific
Heights on the market, leaving the fate of the mural uncertain.
The mural was commissioned for the reading room of the library’s
classical home, designed by architect Albert Pissis. Mathews at the time
was perhaps California’s most important artist, and one who exerted
considerable influence over the education of a generation of early
California artists and the rebuilding of San Francisco after the 1906
earthquake and fire. Other murals by Mathews include a series of 12
panels tracing the history of California in the rotunda of the State
Capitol in Sacramento.
A spokesman for the library said “
it is too early to
tell” about the fate of the mural and that it “depends on a buyer’s
intended use for the building.” The Beaux Arts building is being
marketed as a “one-of-a-kind development opportunity.”
“Although the murals could be removed, it
would be a costly conservation process that would make them even more
difficult to sell,” said Harvey Jones, the longtime curator who built
the Oakland Museum’s expansive collection of work by Arthur Mathews and
his wife, the equally talented artist Lucia Mathews. “It seems unlikely
that a new owner will be able to utilize the murals in a new
configuration of the spaces. Their artistic appeal is dubious to
contemporary business sensibilities.”
Jones, author of The Art of Arthur & Lucia Mathews, added: “I wish there were some reasonable possibilities for optimism here.”
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Art Conservation & Restoration Sergey Konstantinov
Art studio Sergey Konstantinov
www.mindspring.com/~fineart3
http://artstudiosergeykonstantinov.blogspot.com/
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