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Coit Tower San Francisco: Its History and Art - Publisher Ruth (Zakheim) Gottstein with historian Gray Brechin and geographer Liz Vasile
Café opens at noon
Ruth Gottstein, publisher of Coit Tower San Francisco and daughter of artist Bernard Zakheim, will talk about her father’s involvement as one of the artists who created the impressive, controversial murals influenced by Diego Rivera. She presents this definitive guide to Coit Tower authored by her sister Masha with stunning color photos by Don Beatty.
The Coit Tower Murals: An Experiment in New Deal Public Art- Lecture
At the bottom of the Great Depression, President Franklin Roosevelt created the Civil Works Administration to give millions of desperate Americans jobs. The CWA included a public art division that assigned 27 artists and their assistants to embellish the walls of the new Coit Tower on Telegraph Hill. Inspired by both the Italian Renaissance and the concurrent Pacific Maritime Strike, some of the artists pushed the permissible limits by painting overtly political themes which drew the wrath of powerful reactionaries. Dr. Gray Brechin will discuss the art, the artists, and the turbulent events during the creation of a pioneering experiment in federal arts patronage, a project that created controversy that lives on today.
After the lecture, attend a walking tour of North Beach and Coit Tower led by Liz Vasile.
Dr. Gray Brechin is the founder and project scholar of the Living New Deal, a team effort to inventory, map, and interpret the huge public works legacy of President Roosevelt's visionary work relief agencies. He received all of his degrees from the University of California Berkeley where the Living New Deal is a sponsored project of the Department of Geography. He is the author of Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin and, with photographer Robert Dawson, Farewell Promised Land: Waking from the California Dream.
Ruth Gottstein is the owner of Volcano Press, the publisher of groundbreaking books on domestic violence, child and family abuse, and women’s health. The daughter of WPA artist Bernard Zakheim, Gottstein is a longtime activist who met her husband at an Anti Franco rally. She first worked in publishing at Glide Publications, where, in 1976, she published “Battered Wives” the first book in America on domestic violence. After buying the publishing business, she began Volcano Press, which has been publishing books on domestic violence and women’s health for over forty years. She and her son Adam Gottstein, who now runs the business, live in Volcano, a small town in Amador County.
Location: 4th Floor Meeting Room