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Media contact:
Kate Patterson
Tel: (415) 252-4638 Email: kate.patterson@sfgov.org

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New Harvey Milk Center for Recreational Arts will Feature a Suite of Permanent Art Installations Celebrating Harvey Milk and
the History of the Center’s Unique Programs

San Francisco, CA, June 16, 2009 – Director of Cultural Affairs Luis R. Cancel announces the dedication of a suite of permanent artworks on June 20, 2009 at 10:30 AM at the newly-

Photo: GTODD Photography

renovated Harvey Milk Center for Recreational Arts at 50 Scott Street in Duboce Park. Conceived by artists Michael Davis and Susan Schwartzenberg, the installations, located in four distinct sites, provide a visual narrative that interprets the Center’s storied community recreational arts programs and Harvey Milk’s rise as an icon of gay civil rights and progressive urban politics.

“Michael Davis and Susan Schwartzenberg’s wonderful site-specific artworks made from artifacts from the Recreation Center’s collection provide a window into the Center’s rich and vibrant past,” stated Luis R. Cancel. “The artists’ installations pay tribute to Harvey Milk, the Center’s namesake, by referencing his photographic profession, his political career and commitment to neighborhood activism.”

The first artwork, which is titled Bio/Obscura and  located in the Center’s Main Lobby, features an image-embedded glass wall that looks onto the park and includes a collage of personal photographs that visually trace Milk’s evolution from a typical Jewish-American kid to an athlete and naval officer and to a gay political activist. In front of the image wall is a steel ladder-like sculpture, which holds an image sequence of Milk as a professional politician between each rung. Centrally located in the sculpture is a camera obscura with an adjustable lens. Projected onto a ground, glass screen on the back face of the camera is an image of the park outside. The camera obscura references Milk’s life as an amateur photographer and the owner of a camera store, which he used as his campaign headquarters. Duboce Park is also the site where Milk announced his plans to enact a city ordinance that would require people to clean up after their dogs. Together, the glass image wall and the ladder sculpture interpret Milk’s transformation into a self-made politician.

Located on the east, exterior wall facing Duboce Park, The American Dream: A Tribute to Harvey Milk consists  of a fragment of Milk’s famous quote, “…The American Dream starts with the neighborhoods,” from the “A City of Neighborhoods” speech, which was given at his inaugural dinner following his election to the Board of Supervisors in 1977. Rendered in raised, 18-inch text that disappears and reappears depending upon the light, the quote’s prominent placement speaks to Milk’s lasting influence on San Francisco.

According to Susan Schwartzenberg, “We chose to embed one of Milk’s quotes on the exterior of the building because we wanted to express how his ideas from the 1970s—especially the encouragement of citizen involvement in urban and neighborhood issues—are alive and well today in San Francisco politics.”

The third artwork, titled Photography Center Window, also faces the park and is located at the Photography Center. Established in the early 1940s and moved to the Harvey Milk Recreation Center in 1957, the Photography Center is the oldest public darkroom in the country. With the help of Center Director Clarence Towers, the artists’ third installation features an assemblage of photographs taken by professional and amateur photographers who have used the facility over the last 50 years. The images are embedded in the glass on either side of the studio’s glass entry doors and present vignettes of city life and San Francisco history as well as other topics now preserved as an archive of the Center’s past.

The fourth art installation, Homage to the Amateur, tells the story of the Recreation Center’s arts programs from 1926–1951. Located along the hallway leading to the central practice room, the installation includes four framed and interconnected artworks that interpret aspects of the Center’s theater, music, costumes and children’s events collection, which up until recently has remained virtually unknown and unseen.

After doing extensive research, Davis and Schwartzenberg felt that the collection fell into two main categories.  The first is an archive of urban childhood represented by photographs, news clippings, props and puppets made by children, costumes worn by children, and other ephemera. The second category of items includes artifacts and ephemera such as costumes sketches, fabric swatches, notes and scrapbooks that were made under the mentorship of the women volunteers of the San Francisco Urban Story League.

No longer in existence, the Urban Story League produced puppet shows and story-telling in the parks and created hundreds of costumes for children to wear in parades, cultural celebrations, theater and other forms of urban pageantry. Though not considered professionals, this corps of women volunteers made their mark on recreational programming and contributed to the City’s culturally-rich urban environment. The works in Homage to the Amateur celebrate childhood and provide a glimpse at the vast collection that continues to be enjoyed and cared-for through the programs of the Harvey Milk Center.

These public art projects were made possible with funds from the Recreation and Park Department, which allocated two percent of the cost of reconstruction of the Center for the inclusion of public art.  In addition, the Friends of Duboce Park generously funded the installation of the quotation from Harvey Milk on the east-facing wall.

About the Artists
Susan Schwartzenberg is a photographer/visual artist. Her work is realized in multiple forms, investigating themes including; biography, memory, urban life and the psychology of place. She exhibits internationally, and has public works in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Phoenix and Seattle. Published works include, “Cento: A Market St. Journal”; “Hollow City: The Siege of San Francisco”; “Crisis of American Urbanism” and “Becoming Citizens: Family Life and the Politics of Disability”. She studied art and photography at Northern Illinois University and the Chicago Art Institute and received a Loeb Fellowship for Advanced Environmental Studies from Harvard University. She is currently developing a project with the School of Medicine, Stanford University and holds a senior staff position at the Exploratorium in San Francisco.

Artist Michael Davis maintains a studio in San Pedro, California.  He has exhibited in over 33 solo and 65 group exhibitions and has created over 40 public art installations in the U.S. and abroad for museums and galleries and city, state and federal arts agencies. He has received two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, the Hand Hollow Arts Fellowship, and an AIA Award of Excellence.  He has been honored as a visiting artist and guest at numerous university forums and is an active member on advisory boards for the University Arts Museum, Long Beach, CA and Los Angeles Cultural Affairs. Recently, he completed three major public artworks for New York, NY; Seattle, WA; and Washington State University, Vancouver, WA.  He is currently working on public artworks for the cities of San Jose, Ventura, and Kansas City, MO.

About the San Francisco Arts Commission and the Public Art Program
The San Francisco Arts Commission (SFAC) is the City agency that champions the arts in San Francisco. We believe that a creative cultural environment is essential to the City’s well-being. Established by charter in 1932, SFAC programs integrate the arts into all aspects of City life. Programs include: Civic Art Collection, Civic Design Review, Community Arts & Education, Cultural Equity Grants, Public Art, SFAC Gallery, Street Artists Licensing, and the Summer in the City Concert Series. The agency’s core values are committed to the principle that all residents have equal access to arts experiences in all disciplines, that programs are provided comprehensively and evenly throughout the City, and that they are innovative and of the highest quality.

The Arts Commission’s Public Art Program was established by the City Arts Enrichment Ordinance in 1969, as one of the first of its kind in the country. The Public Art Program seeks to promote a diverse and stimulating cultural environment to enrich the lives of the city’s residents, visitors and employees. The Program encourages the creative interaction of artists, designers, city staff, officials and community members during the design of City projects in order to develop public art that is specific to the site and meaningful to the community.

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