• HOME
  • The Murals
  • Join Us
  • DONATE
Facebook Twitter Or sign in with email Don't have an account? Register now
loading
  • The Room Where It Happens: Hamilton, Jefferson & Washington debate the Constitution
  • Sunshine/Rainbow
  • Origins of the American Revolution
  • Education is the Answer
  • Mount Vernon
  • Lady Liberty
  • Lafayette!
  • Battle of Trenton
  • March of Shame
  • Valley Forge
  • Farewell
  • Early Life
  • The Moon

  • Join Us

  • DONATE


The Coalition To Protect Public Art

 * SF Chronicle, February 23, 2020:   Native American Elders Call On SF School Board To Keep Mural On View *

 * SF Chronicle, July 16, 2019:   Mural supporters plan 2020 ballot measure to protect frescos at Washington High *

Artnet News, July 10, 2019:  "This Artist Painted the Black Radical Response to the George Washington Slaveholder Murals. Here’s Why He Stands Against Destroying Them"

CrumplerVideo.png

Tamaka, Choctaw (Chahta) Nation Elder, speaks about the value of the murals

Tamaka_2.png

There are 13 major New Deal murals in the lobby of George Washington High School in San Francisco. Painted in 1936 by Coit Tower muralist Victor Arnautoff, a former assistant of Diego Rivera, these murals were part of a publicly-funded Works Progress Administration (WPA) mural project called “Life and Era of George Washington.”

On June 25, 2019, the San Francisco School Board voted to spend $600,000 to destroy all 13 of these murals. After an international outcry and outpouring of public opposition, on August 13, 2019, the School Board voted instead to spend $825,000 to permanently board over and cover all of these murals with solid panels to hide them from view.

In February 2020, the entire GWHS campus was nationally recognized by the National Park Service “Historic American Building Survey." It is the only public school in San Francisco with such a distinction.

The COALITION TO PROTECT PUBLIC ART is organizing to protect this valuable public art from being destroyed or permanently blocked from public view.  We are taking a number of actions.  We support a plan to identify and  undertake a wide range of alternative options to increase education, provide mural context for viewers, create more art, and provide students and others a choice to decide for themselves whether or not to view art instead of the government destroying the murals or permanently preventing anyone from ever seeing them. If the School Board continues to ignore these nationally recognized plans, our coalition is ready to qualify an initiative and pass a ballot measure titled the “Protect Public Access to Public Art Initiative."

We need your help to protect this important public art before it's too late - please donate, sign up, and join us now.

  

 

 

Do you like this page?
Tweet

Paid for by Coalition To Protect Public Art

 

P.O. Box 591171, SF, CA 94159

 

Committee major funding from:

1. Clint Reilly ($25,000)

2. George Washington High School Alumni Association ($23,250)

3. Rocco Landesman ($15,002)

 

Financial disclosures are available at sfethics.org

FPPC# 1419654

Coalition To Protect Public Art

  • HOME
  • The Murals
  • Join Us
  • DONATE

Sign in with Facebook, Twitter or email.

Created with NationBuilder – Theme by Tectonica