The Coit Tower Murals

The Coit Tower Murals: New Deal Art and Political Controversy in San Francisco presents the history of the murals created at Coit Tower through the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP), the first New Deal art program. There, some twenty-five master artists and twenty-four assistants created murals on all the walls of the first two floors and along the stairway between; most were in buon fresco and drew upon the palette and style of Diego Rivera. These murals boosted the careers of Victor Arnautoff, Lucien Labaudt, Ralph Stackpole, Bernard Zakheim, and others who contributed to later New Deal art projects. At Coit Tower one artist painted a prominent hammer and sickle, a symbol of Communism, creating the first national political controversy over New Deal art. This book traces the history of the Coit Tower murals through their creation and various controversies to their present status as a beloved city landmark. The book also follows and critiques the treatment of those murals by art critics and art historians, looks at the legacies of both the Coit Tower project and the PWAP more generally, and concludes with a survey of recent San Francisco controversies over New Deal art. The book provides full-color photographs of all the murals.