Precita Eyes Collections Preservation Project

FAIN: PG-233603-16

Precita Eyes Muralists Association, Inc. (San Francisco, CA 94110-4133)
Cornelia Bleul-Gohlke (Project Director: May 2015 to February 2018)

Hiring a consultant and two graduate student interns to conduct a preservation assessment and provide recommendations for storage needs and improved public access for an archive related to murals in San Francisco’s Mission neighborhood. The applicant seeks to preserve documentation associated with 540 mural projects sponsored by the Precita Eyes Muralist Association since 1977. The collection contains original drawings, narratives, photos, and video of most of the murals, as well as nearly 100 “portable” murals on Tyvek, panels, and doors. In addition, the applicant maintains a reference archive of books, newsletters, and magazines documenting the muralist movement in the Bay Area. With the assistance of two interns, the consultant would conduct the first-ever assessment of the collection and advise on short- and long-term storage preservation needs.

Precita Eyes Muralists is requesting funding to preserve its historic collection of drawings, photographs, videos, and written narratives related to murals it has created primarily in the multi-cultural Mission neighborhood of San Francisco since 1977, as well as portable murals used in exhibits and local events. This collection also includes documentation of murals created by other groups and individuals in the Mission during this period. The Mission murals represent a unique merger of the art of ancient Central America and the Mexican muralist movement of the 1900's with art created in California by Latino immigrants and other artists beginning in the social and cultural upheavals of the 1960's. Many of these artworks have been destroyed by human action or weather over the years and live on only in the Precita archive. This grant will allow us to preserve this material and provide access to it for scholars, students and the general public.