Cards from 1947 and 1951 for prints checked out by Clyfford Still, Richard Diebenkorn, David Park, Douglas MacAgy, Clay Spohn, James Weeks, Hassel Smith, and William Gaw.

Bookworm

Author
April Martin

Decade

1870s 1900s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s

Tags

The Library Murals Video

This is sacred ground, first made holy by the Ohlone Tribes that stewarded the land and then by some of the greatest artists in the world who walked these floors, perused the books, napped on the couches, fucked in the corners, snorted coke off DVDs, and were inspired by the works of Henri Cartier-Bresson, Van Gogh, Kerry James Marshall, Dorothea Lange . . . .

Upon entering the San Francisco Art Institute’s Anne Bremer Memorial Library, you feel like you’ve stepped back in time to a quaint library you’d find in a small town. What it lacks in bells and whistles, it makes up in history and beauty. The pièce de résistance is the reading room. This magnificent space has Craftsman wood paneling and floors, murals by Victor Arnautoff, and sweeping views of the Bay. The centerpiece is Jacques Schnier’s gold library fireplace relief The Soil, shimmering in the brilliant Northern California light. Close your eyes and you can imagine Adams, Rothko, Kuchar, Dewey, Opie, and Kehinde all in this one room being inspired to create their own masterpieces. Little-known secret: you can eat in this library! In all my time there, I never witnessed anyone disrespect the space with litter. Like Kehinde Wiley, I still have overdue books. Jeff Gunderson said I can keep them.

AM

Jacques Schnier: The Soil, 1935. Library fireplace relief. Photo: Muffy Kibbey’s photography class, 2019. Courtesy SFAI Library.

From the college catalog: Ansel Adams’s 1939 photograph of the library with librarian Hazel Pearcy. Courtesy SFAI Library.

Flo Allen models for Richard Diebenkorn’s drawing class in 1948. Photo: William Heick. Courtesy SFAI Library.

Photographer Hank Wessel’s faculty ID, 1973. Courtesy SFAI Library.

The Creative Act by Victor Arnautoff. Courtesy SFAI Library.

Library staff members Caroline Savage, Sharon Chickanzeff, Jim Van Buskirk, and Margaret Cleaver, 1978. Courtesy SFAI Library.

Angela Davis’s “Art and Politics” interview with student Dan Augustine in the SFAI student newspaper, 1981.

David and Peggy Ross exhibit in the SFAI library display case, 2003.

The SFAI library in Town and Country online, 2016. Photo: SFAI student Marco Castaneda.

Kehinde Wiley at the unveiling of Obama’s presidential portrait, New York Times, 2018.

The SFAI library’s copy of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s The Decisive Moment (1958).

Links

J. L. Pimsleur, “Flo Allen: Legendary Artist’s Model,” SFGATE, 1997

Secondary Connections