Cultural endowment may help fund SM mural
By SUSAN TAM Special to the Daily Press
SM LIBRARY — Almost seven decades ago, local artist Stanton Macdonald-Wright unveiled a 2,000-foot mural, a project that had dominated his life for 18 months and worked him to the point of exhaustion.
Macdonald-Wright had designed the mural specifically for the reading room in the Santa Monica Public Library. But when the Main Library was to be rebuilt in 1966, the $5 million mural could not fit and it was dismantled and donated to the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
Now, the city is working to return the pieces of the enormous mural to their original home — a lengthy process that will cost an estimated $230,000. If all goes to plan, the mural someday would be on display on the second floor of the new $72 million Main Library.
FROM COAST TO COAST The mural series, called “Technical and Imaginative Pursuits of Early Man,” is a chronological sequence designed to flow in a circle, with the streams of history culminating in a panel depicting the filming of a movie. Placed at the entrance of the library, the panel displayed Macdonald-Wright’s belief that movies held the greatest potential for artistic expression.
Part of the challenge of returning the murals is that Macdonald-Wright’s piece is not simply resting in storage and awaiting its homecoming. Rather, its pieces were split up and now reside in different locations.
In early 1967, the mural arrived at the Smithsonian, said Laura Baptiste, a spokeswoman for the museum. However, the Smithsonian also is undergoing a renovation expected to be complete in 2006 and it was not able to display the work, she said.
Thirty of the panels were put in storage in Landover, Md., according to Karen Ginsberg, assistant director of the Department of Community and Cultural Services. Seven others were stored in Los Angeles on the city of Santa Monica’s dime and one is on display at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Baptiste said.
Over the years, several attempts have been made to return the murals to Santa Monica. One proposed plan would have featured them at the airport.
DIGGING FOR GOLD This summer, the Smithsonian and the city of Santa Monica agreed on a long-term loan of the mural if the city could pay for its transportation, conservation and installation. The city commissioned an estimate from two local conservators, Dr. Duane Chartier and Susan Fried, as well as Dr. Ilene Susan Fort of LACMA. The three estimated transportation and restoration costs at $230,000.
The City Council then decided to pay for half the costs and apply for a grant from a state agency to fund the other half. This process got underway on Oct. 26, Ginsberg said.
The Council hopes to obtain the money from the California Cultural and Historical Endowment, a state agency established two years ago. CCHE has pledged to spend $122 million on projects embracing California culture, but to-date has not decided how to spend the money.
“We are still waiting to hear from them,” said Ginsberg. “They have a tentative board meeting scheduled Dec. 13 and 14 in Sacramento, and we should hear from them before then, if recommended,” she said.
“This is the first time they have administered it, and it is the first cycle of three rounds of funding. There is up to $35 million available in the first cycle. It’s hard to know how competitive (it is), but my sense is it will be very competitive,” Ginsberg said.
The city cannot contact the agency before its decision, and the agency has not yet posted a list of other applicants, she said.
The city has applied for a grant of $113,241 that will be used for conservation treatment work, such as cleaning and the removal of over paint. An equal amount paid for by the city will go toward transporting, packing, administration and installation of the panels.
A HISTORICAL WORK Macdonald-Wright worked for 18 months to produce the murals, an experience that was reportedly physically daunting and emotionally draining. He refused payment so that the city could fund two assistants.
“For weeks, I dragged my legs like a bug that has been stepped on, half-paralyzed through nervousness, at other times influenza made me fall off the scaffolding and pass out of consciousness,” he said to a friend.
Macdonald-Wright was a pioneer of Synchromism, an early American avant-garde movement that compared color to sounds. The movement was centered around the belief that the distance between notes in a chord is like the difference between colors on a palette wheel, and a painting could almost be scientifically created.
The work that was created for the Santa Monica Library was done during the Works Project Administration’s Federal Art Project, during a time when artists demonstrated how art could be incorporated into everyday lives and public spaces, Ginsberg said. It is the most famous project from the federal program in California, she said.
“We’re very excited. They are huge panels. Some are eight feet tall,” said Rachel Foyt, an administrative assistant at the Santa Monica Library.
The layout of the new library is different from the original plan, so the murals will have to be displayed differently.
“We’ve been working with the design team to accommodate the murals. The murals fit on the second floor within the space (there),” Ginsberg said.
Many outstanding Santa Monica personages of the day found their way into portraits in the murals. The sequence features actor Leo Carrillo, director Frank Tuttle, W.H. Carter, who was the mayor at the time, and young starlet, Gloria Stewart, who played the adult character Rose in the movie “Titanic.” Macdonald- Wright even includes a self-portrait as a troubadour playing a lyre — alà Hitchcock.
As the library construction creeps toward its completion date in 2006, the city council hopes efforts to return Macdonald-Wright’s work to Santa Monica will pay off.
“We hope to have them installed in time for the grand opening for the library, assuming grant funds come through,” Ginsberg said.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on November 26, 2004. Read the original PDF.