Diego Rivera: Moving a Masterpiece

this is the universe doubling down on impossible this is quite literally exponentially harder than anything i've ever been involved with they all had experience working on frescoes but nothing like this the enormity of it really was overwhelming i've been trying to move it for a decade it's the greatest work of art in this city that very very few people have ever seen [Music] [Music] this crew in san francisco is tasked with moving a priceless piece of art moving this diego rivera mural across the city it's taken this big team and it's been the result of quite a few years work but diego's story starts way before that the story begins with diego rivera one of the most influential artists of the 20th century known for his murals and paintings this larger-than-life artist actively painted for more than 50 years and spent significant periods of his career in europe and the us as well as his native mexico from the moment 1921 when he returns to mexico from over a decade spent in europe and paints his first mural in 1922-23 called creation in mexico city to uh the early 1940s both the painting of pan american unity in 1940 and some of the easel work that he did during the war and so over this two decade period rivera made most of his greatest and most famous paintings [Music] and it was during this time period he was invited by renowned architect timothy fluger to the golden gate international exposition of 1939 san francisco's world fair on treasure island dr grace morley who was the first director of the san francisco museum of art which is now sf moma was going down to south america to solicit some art and timothy fluger says well stop in mexico city and sound out rivera early in his career rivera dabbled in cubism and later moved into social realism but he established himself with his own unique style and large-scale sweeping murals the organizers of the world fair commissioned rivera to paint a large mural using the fresco technique as the centerpiece of an interactive exhibit called art in action art and action was just the program that fluger came up with artists would work and the public could come and watch rivera arrives to the fair but wants to make an even larger mural than planned rivera starts compiling images but almost immediately he decides to make the mural bigger so it's supposed to be three panels wide let's make it five panels wide now because the mural is significantly larger they wouldn't be able to finish it during the regular run of the fair a fresco painting is when the plaster is wet and the pigment is applied to the fresh plaster which is a really difficult medium to to master and he certainly did that and one of the best modern fresco painters i think in the world it took rivera four months to paint the mural he achieved that in only three in only four months i mean only seems very long time but it's a very short period of time to achieve something of this magnificence this mural has a long original title the marriage of the artistic expression of the north and of the south on this continent and because that's so long people generally refer to it as pan-american unity because the mural has these two parts a left side that emphasizes the history and cultural expression of mexico in particular latin america in general and then on the right side an emphasis on the united states and particularly industrial development and the urban landscape of san francisco it was his plea it seems to me as a as an artist and as an activist that mexico the united states should stay aligned the whole mural is a tapestry he's interweaving metaphors ironies icons shapes themes and as more of it reveals itself to me i'm going you know i just i'm just at a loss for how brilliant he was and placed in the middle of the mural is a stunning portrait of frida kahlo not only one of his four wives with which he had its impetuous marriage but also already an acclaimed artist herself [Music] rivera rarely painted frida kahlo rivera incorporated her into some murals they were divorced in 1939 they remarried by 1940 and so now he's kind of pulling her back into his world in a way but i don't think kahlo is here so much as rivera's wife or even as a love object but as a great sort of emblem of the american artist she's carrying she has holding a palette and brushes in her hand and so he's really elevating her as the artist this is really a mural that kind of postulates perhaps san francisco is some sort of a great utopian space that where all of this cult these cultural forces are coming together he not only lived in san francisco with kalo but they also were married for a second time at san francisco city hall in 1940 after the world fair closed the mural part of a grand plan by timothy fluger was to be placed in a new library at city college of san francisco but world war ii shifted the plan city college kind of had bad luck with this mural it was originally going to go into a library that never got built the mural ended up going into storage until it was installed in 1961 in the lobby of the new campus theater and that's where the mural has remained until now [Music] coming up it's not going to tell you that it's about to break it's just going to break that's what keeps kept a few of us up at night [Music] diego rivera's pan american unity mural is massive together all 10 panels measure 22 by 74 feet and weigh over 60 000 pounds so why is it important to bring it to sf moma rivera is one of the most important artists ever to work in san francisco really thrilled to be able to bring it here because it's in a free space of the museum anyone can come see this this mural for free for the next couple of years in the roberts family gallery so it's a really exciting prospect for us the treasured pan american unity mural has been in city college of san francisco's campus theater since 1961. to move it to sf moma is a grand scale project not unlike rivera's mural the reason this is such a complicated de-installation and reinstallation is just the fact that the mural is very large and there's very little known about it and as far as we could tell it was just put up on the wall with the concrete studs the only way to get at the studs which were encased in concrete is to drill 18-inch core holes next to them and then stick your head in there or somebody else stick their head in there look to the side and try and cut the studs which was our plan the crew has been working a day to two days per panel simply to carve out the grout that's next to the studs the mural itself is only about an inch in thickness creating a delicate situation there wasn't a lot of information because the the design of this panel is pretty unique there are other portable panels but they're not this thin the condition of pan american unity when we first saw it in 2018 was somewhat surprising in how delicate the condition was for a fresco it was when we really got close enough to the mural to tell that there was a significant amount of powdering of the pigment layer was when we understood um the full delicacy of the condition and so the process to move it began with a special partnership we got a great team through the national autonomous university in mexico city a group that's comprised of people from an interdisciplinary consortium of sorts through the art history chemistry physics conservation departments i'm so proud not only because there are mexican teams involved from fine arts and from unam but mainly i worked for 10 years at the national autonomous university it's the largest university in mexico it's where 50 of the research that is done in mexico comes from our experience about handling very delicate pieces of art or things about the history of mexico that they have to be transported to another museum the way that you handle it the way that you put it uh the the way you handle you you you put the encasement or you put the box to protect it we have studied all those elements the scientists at munam university in mexico city built a replica of the mural to test different conditions and to see how they could move it safely mockups were created and we had the dates set i think it was march 16 2020 that we were a group of us from san francisco including the museum and our rigging team art handling team staff from city college a whole group of us set to go down and try these tests out well then coveted hit everyone was wired in by zoom we were watching these mock-ups happen over zoom and they proceeded to remove the mock-up from the wall cutting the studs in the ways that we had proposed and they also at one point just started to try to push and test and actually cause cracking the conservators and the art handlers on the project said can you develop for us something as simple as something like a stoplight the equivalent of a stoplight that green light go red light stop yellow warning you're getting close so my team over there the team at unam we are installing the sensors that's going to monitor the activity of the vibrations in the panel so what we're measuring is the vibrations the sensors send out a signal to the computer that we have over there on the top floor and also to this little model of a sort of traffic light which indicates that if we're good to go and keep working or if the vibrations are going too harsh on the mural and we have to stop so this is part of the system that we are working on with these cables are attached to the mural to each sensor located in a different part of the mural different corner they are five five in total so this is one of the sensors it's an accelerometer three axial accelerometer we can measure vibrations in the three x in x y and z and the man known as the guardian of the mural who spent more than 20 years at city college of san francisco advocating for it to have a better space for people to see it has kept an eye on the whole process the guardian is kind of funny you know i called myself the steward the historian now i'm kind of reverting i'm a storyteller but a few years back uh some dignitaries came from synchropom which is the organization in mexico which takes care of and conserves all objects of art and they said oh no you're el custodio the guardian i like that a lot eventually prepped with the results from the mexico city scientists a team in san francisco began moving the mural away from the wall panel by panel the full structure itself is about eight inches in depth six of those inches are an external armature of junior steel constructed on the back as a frame bolted to that is a an angle iron that has a wire mesh attached to it and that's an inch and a quarter thick so still pretty thin for fresco and the team made some interesting discoveries as they pulled it away from the wall generally speaking it was in good condition and then we added protection a a thin facing around the borders of each individual panel which we determined to be the most vulnerable areas during transport and one of the biggest challenges is still to come moving a giant priceless diego rivera mural across the city of san francisco in the middle of the night [Music] we have to move not the machine but very very nice i i say that a very fragile element of an object a piece of art that is very fragile that we cannot crack and we have to be very careful to prevent anything diego rivera's pan unity mural is 74 feet wide and 22 feet tall and weighs over 60 thousand pounds the tense process to move it across the city safely is not easy but the team prepared for everything so we have the the original frame for the fresco we've built custom frames for it to live on called panel mounts and now we're welding uh square washers on to lock this into the the frame so that the panel is secure for its lifetime and it can be moved around more safely so this is a wire rope isolator it works pretty much the same as the suspension system in your car the panel sits on top of this its goal is to reduce the amount of movement of the object that sits on it they are placed here in the base of of the travel frames so they travel with the panels and reduce the movement during the transportation crane moves the mural to a flatbed truck and the crew prepares it for the journey making sure it's secure and covered the big panels have to move in the middle of the night because they're over high they're not a legal load and you have to file with the city for a route and you have to get permitted and they tell you what route to drive and they tell you when to do it and so in the spring of 2021 after years of planning on several early cold dark mornings with the weather and traffic closely monitored the team moves the 10 panels of the mural across the city one by one and everybody gets in this little caravan and they drive really really slow for not very many miles but it takes like an hour and a half because you're going like five miles an hour and there they have a car that goes in front that has a pole that's the size of the mural and they have little searchlights and we all just kind of drive really slow where there's no one awake and no cars around and it's kind of cool [Music] [Music] once at sf moma the team has to get it across howard street [Music] we had to you know close howard street for when we swing across the street so nobody drive under or walk underneath the crane and we had to go over the wires and those are muni wires and you can't really touch them the reason that they're throwing ropes over high voltage lines is because you have to control the load and especially something that that's basically a sale can get out of hand really quickly if there's a gust of wind and these guys look like they're right out of a diego river mural i mean this diego would have pushed it he would have he'd be all over this and diego would be just like me like enthralled look at that watching anybody that knows what they're doing it's just so much fun and an emotional day for the team as they near the finish line this project was people asked me he said well is this like your wildest dreams and i always go my wildest dreams were never this good there are so many smart people working on this it's incredible this project has been just truly phenomenal for me personally and professionally and after years of planning an exciting time for everyone involved as the whole mural is finally in place inside sf moma something that i said to my students is that when you make a machine it's like you have to make a piece of art that has to talk by itself has to dance by itself and has to sing by itself i mean it's a dream come true for me it's something i've been [Music] imagining happening for probably 10 years now and so it's it's it's really gratifying and it's good i think it's been wonderful for the museum wonderful for the city wonderful for the community wonderful for city college of san francisco so i think it's an extraordinary moment to move a priceless giant diego rivera mural from city college of san francisco to sf moma is a project that will impact generations to come we will be working when the exhibition is open so anyone can come by and have a look to see what it's like to work as a conservator this team is preparing the mural for the future we can pass it forward and say yeah we did a we did a good job it's going to be documented like crazy and so in the future people will look back and they'll say whoever they were thank you you know we did a good job i think that this time of world history to show everyone the pan-american unity mural has an additional meaning besides the artistic and the scientific collaboration it shows the spirit of unity the whole continent and it will be able to spread the idea that we can achieve many things working together working in unity so the mural will be here for about two years and then in due course it will it will leave us it's not it's not with us permanently it will go back to city college where they'll put it on display in a permanent way and the mural will also be there during the summer of 2022 when the exhibit diego rivera's america opens at sf moma it's a survey exhibition of his work in the 20s and 30s in mexico and the united states and will maynez known as the guardian of the mural takes it all in this is how the mural was meant to be displayed where somebody can see it moma is setting the standard for how this thing should be displayed [Music] you

Channel: NBC Bay Area

Views: 606

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Diego Rivera, mural, Diego Rivera mural, SFMOMA, SFMOMA Diego Rivera, Diego Rivera moving a masterpiece, moving a masterpiece, San Francisco, San Francisco museum of modern art, MOMA, SF MOMA, art, artwork, masterpiece

Id: r6K2YTyN4jg

Length: 24min 2sec (1442 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 13 2021