The Left Coast

Thursday, July 28, 2011, 6:00 p.m.

Book event with photographer Alex Fradkin and writer Philip Fradkin

Philip Fradkin, one of California’s most astute environmental historians, felt drawn to the coast as soon as he arrived in California in 1960. His first book, California: The Golden Coast, captured the wonder of the shoreline’s natural beauty along with the controversies it engendered in 1974. In this book, the author and his photographer son Alex Fradkin revisit some of the same places they explored together in the early 1970s. From their written and visual approaches, this father-and-son team brings a unique generational perspective to the subject. Mixing history, geography, interviews, and personal experiences, they present a realistic portrait of a dramatic coastline within the context of their close relationship. Alex Fradkin’s expressive photographs contribute an additional layer of meaning and enrich the subject with their distinctive eloquence while adding another dimension to his father’s words.  In this way, the book becomes the story of a relationship as well as a probing study of a varied and contested coastline. Book will be available for purchase at event. Please RSVP to 415.357.1848, ext. 229 or rsvp@calhist.org.

Labor Oral Histories: Available Now on the Internet Archive

            Thanks to Pamela Jean Vadakan and the California Audiovisual Preservation Project, four of CHS’ labor oral histories have been digitized and are available on the Internet Archive:

http://www.archive.org/details/californiahistoricalsociety

            Created in the late 1970s for CHS, these oral histories provide a fascinating and intimate glimpse into the California labor movement, its leadership and rank-and-file membership; its progress, setbacks, and internecine struggles; and some of its defining events, including the San Francisco General Strike of 1934. Finding aids to CHS’ collection of labor oral histories are available on the Online Archive of California.

           

            Now, scholars, students, and others can listen to four of these important stories, narrated in real time by the voices of the past.

Marie Silva, Archivist & Manuscripts Librarian

A Century of Landscapes

A Century of Landscapes: Selections from the California Art Club

At the dawn of the twentieth century, California became home to a legion of artists who came to paint the state’s awe-inspiring natural landscapes “en plein air,” an Impressionistic style in which painters worked outdoors in order to capture the ephemeral moment of natural lighting across a landscape. The California Art Club was established in 1909, by artists, patrons, and visionaries for the sole purpose of capturing the beauty of California’s landscapes in their paintings. The California Art Club is recognized as one of the oldest, largest and most active leading professional art organizations in the world. A unique aspect of the organization is that it includes among its members nationally renowned artists, art students, hobbyists, art scholars and art enthusiasts, in order to interject different perspectives into the dialogue about traditional art.

The California Art Club is marking its historic 100th anniversary by paying tribute to a century of landscape paintings with a series of art exhibitions to be held at museums and historic sites throughout California, including the California Historical Society’s San Francisco gallery.The California Art Club’s centennial exhibition, A Century of Landscapes: Selections from the California Art Club is on view July 14 through October 15,  2011. Join us for the opening reception on July 14 from 5:30 - 7:30 p.m.

The California Historical Society is the only Bay Area venue for this exhibition celebrating the one hundred year legacy of the California Art Club. The juried exhibition of works from current members will be supplemented by pieces of art and other materials from the rich collections of the California Historical Society.

Among the artworks made by California Art Club members and held in the California Historical Society’s Collection is Norman Stiles Chamberlain’s 1923 painting San Juan Capistrano, which is one of the most famous missions of California. George Demont Otis’ view of Chinese Shrimp Camp, Hunter’s Point, ca. 1920s documents early shoreline industry and a way of life and serves as counterpoint to the vibrancy of Esther Anna Hunt’s ChineseTemple Scene, San Francisco, 1915.

The California Historical Society collection also holds multiple works by one of the California Art Club’s earliest members, Charles Albert Rogers. The painting, Fernside, Alameda, California, was painted in 1905 and shows a rural landscape before the influx of 1906 earthquake survivors from across the Bay. Beyond the shadows to the right is a sliver of the Oakland estuary, and further in the distance behind the trees are the Oakland Hills. In stark contrast, his paintings, San Francisco―City Hall, 1906, shows the aftermath of the devastation and After the Fire, 1906, a finished study of steps and concrete walls at the base of a destroyed Nob Hill house.

View these and other fascinating works in A Century of Landscapes: Selections from the California Art Club on view at the California Historical Society through October 15, 2011. For more information about this exhibition visit www.californiahistoricalsociety.org. For more information about statewide California Art Club centennial exhibition sites, visit www.californiaartclub.org.

Images above:

George Demont Otis (American, 1879-1962), Chinese Shrimp Camp, Hunter’s Point, ca. 1920s, Oil on canvas, gift of Kathleen Tamony; Estate of Peter Tamony, California Historical Society, 87-3-1

Charles Albert Rogers (American 1848-1918), After the Fire, 1906, Oil on canvas, Gift of Genelle Relfe, California Historical Society, 94-3-5

Norman Stiles Chamberlain (American, 1887-1961), San Juan Capistrano, 1923, Oil on canvas, Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Earl Bubar, California Historical Society, 83-9-1

Charles Albert Rogers (American 1848-1918), Fernside, Alameda, California, 1905, Oil on canvas, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Desky, California Historical Society, 81-19-1

Friday and Saturday - Last Chance to View Think California

Think California

What comes to mind when you think of California? Beaches, the Gold Rush, freeways and road trips, cultural diversity, agricultural abundance, earthquakes, Hollywood? Indeed, there are many spectacular stories in California’s history. The California Historical Society presents Think California, an exhibition highlighting the colorful history of California through the institution’s remarkable collection of artwork, artifacts, and ephemera. This ambitious exhibition asks the question “What do you think about when you think of California?” Here you see both common and little known facts of the Golden State’s fascinating history, as well as the myths and realities that are the lore of California. 

Think California will  be on view through Saturday, July 2, 2011 from 12:00 - 4:30 pm in the galleries of the California Historical Society, 678 Mission Street, San Francisco.

What are your summer plans?

It’s summertime! For vacation ideas—OK, for ideas that your grandparents might have considered—come check out our new mini-displays. Fishing, camping, swimming and road-trips. Beaches, valleys mountains. Lick Observatory, Disneyland, Santa Cruz Boardwalk… There’s a selection of maps and brochures to tickle your fancy and get you out exploring the state!

Golden Gate Bridge

On May 27, 1937, the newly completed Golden Gate Bridge opened to pedestrian traffic. Vehicles began crossing the bridge the next day. Take a look at an opening day ticket as well as other fantastic pieces of Golden Gate Bridge Fiesta ephemera from the collection of the California Historical Society.

Baseball Fruit Labels

With the Giants taking on the Dodgers today, we're sharing baseball themed fruit labels from the collection of the California Historical Society.

– Alison Moore, Reference Staff

Jonestown Memorial

The Jonestown Memorial Foundation is dedicating a memorial at the burial site in an Oakland cemetery on Memorial Day. One family member of a person who died in Jonestown has been fighting the memorial for years, because it will include the name of Jim Jones among those who died. She is now before a local court seeking an injunction to stop the ceremony. The Jonestown Memorial Foundation asked that I send a note in support of the memorial that could be presented to the court. This is what I sent.

“The California Historical Society has the honor and responsibility to be the official, court-designated repository for the official records associated with Peoples Temple and Jonestown. We accept with gravity that weighty responsibility as a trustee of all of the complex relationships, overwhelming emotions, and competing interpretations of everything associated with Peoples Temple, and especially of the overpowering tragedy of Jonestown.

Every year, on the anniversary of the Jonestown tragedy, the California Historical Society sets aside a day where the descendents and family members of those who lost loved ones in Jonestown can grieve, heal, and renew. It is a powerful experience and a spiritual commitment that we accept in deep humility.

But, while this experience among the visual and documentary evidence of our memories is important and consoling, it is limited, personal, and private. A simple, elegant, and public memorial at Evergreen Cemetery not only is appropriate, but is demanded, in order to allow the broadest public and the most private individual to share together in the healing experience of memory. Of course there is hurt that will never be healed and anger that never will be assuaged. But the power of just simply and publicly identifying all of those who lost their lives—all of them—in this tragedy perhaps is the only chance of ultimate closure.

To anyone who considers this memorial inappropriate, I urge you to think of the power of the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C. The officers who died while misleading American troops, officials, and citizens over the nature of the war are still listed on the wall. No name on that wall has had to pass a litmus test of purity or intent. They all died together. And today they are all remembered together. We have no more right to exclude from our community memory those who (perhaps correctly) we now judge harshly than we have to exclude George Washington or Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Jefferson from the national parchment because they owned slaves.

We cannot ask of history that it be fair or balanced or positive or expulitory. Indeed, it may explain nothing more than the heroic vanity of the human spirit. History is nothing more than one of many potential futures that could have happened—but this one did. It may not be the future—or the past—that you or I would have wanted, or even that the participants who created it intended. But it is the past all the same. Just because a particular event, a particular history, is not what we would have intended, because it hurts, because it is unresolved, is all the more reason to remember. We honor those who had their own dreams and strove to fulfill them, like those in Jonestown, by remembering them. We honor the people who suffered unpredicted and inconceivable horror, like those in Jonestown, by remembering them. That is why this memorial is needed. Please support it.”

For more information on the Peoples Temple Collection at the California Historical Society, visit http://californiahistoricalsociety.blogspot.com/2010/09/chs-digitization-project-peoples-temple.html.

---David Crosson, Executive Director of the California Historical Society

A Century of Landscapes Exhibition Opening Reception

Thursday, July 14, 2011, 5:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.

A Century of Landscapes: Selections from the California Art Club

Exhibition Opening Reception

Free Event @ California Historical Society, 678 Mission St., San Francisco

Join us at the California Historical Society for the opening night celebration of our newest exhibition, A Century of Landscapes: Selections from the California Art Club. From July 14th through October 15th, the California Historical Society will host the California Art Club’s centennial exhibition. At the dawn of the twentieth century, California became home to a legion of artists who came to paint the state’s awe inspiring natural landscapes “en plein air,” an Impressionistic style in which painters worked outdoors in order to capture the ephemeral moment of natural lighting across a landscape. The California Art Club was established in 1909, by artists, patrons, and visionaries for the sole purpose of capturing the beauty of California’s landscapes in their paintings. The California Historical Society is the only Bay Area venue for this exhibition celebrating the one hundred year legacy of the California Art Club. The juried exhibition of works from current members will be supplemented by pieces of art and other materials from the rich collections of the California Historical Society. We hope you can join us for the opening night reception. Please RSVP to kjacobson@calhist.org or 415.357.1848, ext. 229.

Myths about the Transcontinental Railroad and the Building of the American West

Myths about the Transcontinental Railroad and the Building of the American West

Wednesday, June 8, 2011 - 6:00 p.m.

The Commonwealth Club of California and the California Historical Society present:

Richard White, Professor of History, Stanford University; Author, Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America

In conversation with David Kennedy, Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History, Emeritus

Event will be held at the Commonwealth Club of California, San Francisco office, 595 Market Street, 2nd Floor

Cost: $20 standard, $12 CHS and CCC members, $7 students (with valid ID)

Drawing on extensive knowledge on the American West and 12 years of research on the railroads, Richard White will reveal the social and economic impact the transcontinental railroad has had on shaping the United States into what it is today. With an iconoclastic perspective, White recasts our understanding of the Gilded Age. Hop aboard as White explores 19th-century politics, greed, corruption, money, and corporate arrogance – and the America formed out of them after the Civil War. For questions or to purchase tickets, please call 415.597.6705 or purchase online at the Commonwealth Club website. If you are a member of the California Historical Society, be sure to enter or mention the coupon code: historicalsocietyforwhite.