This week the 20 by 30-foot refurbished mural depicting a thousand years of Santa Clara Valley history was reinstalled near Gate 15 inside Terminal A at Mineta San Jose International Airport, completing the challenging and at times uncertain transition of a popular painting that had hung in the main hall of Terminal C since 1977.

The painting by noted California muralist Millard Sheets was a gift to the community in 1976 by the San Jose Mercury and San Jose News, predecessors of the Mercury News, in honor of the 200th anniversary of the founding of San Jose and the 125th anniversary of the establishment of the newspapers.  Millard Sheets spent six months creating the work in his studio in Claremont, CA. It was the last of 120 murals that Sheets had painted.

The mural consists of a series of scenes that pay tribute to the area's heritage, beginning with native Californians, through Spanish explorers and Mexican rancheros, to the early days of the development of technology leading to Silicon Valley.  

The Airport's recent comprehensive modernization project included the demolition of old Terminal C starting last summer.  Knowing that the mural deserved a special place in the community, the City of San José Public Art Program conducted a thorough investigation with expert art conservators to find realistic and cost-effective ways to preserve the mural.  In its efforts to find answers, the City reached out to the community, historic preservation organizations and the Sheets family.  Initial assessments by consulting art preservationists suggested that it might be nearly impossible to save the mural, or, with cost estimates as high as one million dollars, could be prohibitively expensive to preserve it. So the official recommendation was to document the painting with high-resolution photography and create a detailed facsimile for remounting if the original could not be saved. 

Tony Sheets completing mural restoration.

Then Tony Sheets, the son of Millard Sheets and an artist himself, drew from his previous experience in saving five of his father's other murals from destruction. Under Sheet's direction, a crew of workers from Hensel Phelps Construction Co., the airport's project contractor, successfully removed the mural from the Terminal C with minimal damage. They began slowly and gently peeling the mural from the wall, rolling two large strips of the canvas on to plastic and copper pipes scavenged from the now deserted terminal.  Five painstaking hours later, with additional workers joining the effort, the mural was removed from the wall, largely intact without damage. Over the past several months, Hensel Phelps workers have painstakingly removed wallboard and glue from the back of the mural, preparing it for restoration and installation in a new location inside the airport.

Workers carefully unroll mural onto wall during reinstallation.

Earlier this week the artwork was installed in its new location in Terminal A. Tony Sheets removed decades of grime from the mural and finished restorative touch ups and repair of minor damage and with that, an epic preservation effort is complete so that Millard Sheets gift will continued to be enjoyed for years to come.

MILLARD SHEETS

Painter, muralist, water colorist, and architectural designer, Millard Sheets was born in Pomona, California in 1907.  He was active in the local Public Works of Art Project, the first New Deal art program in 1933, and he became one of fifteen artists chosen nationally to paint murals in the Department of the Interior in Washington, D.C. in the 1940s. He headed the art departments of Scripps College and Claremont Graduate School for more than 20 years until 1955. For 27 years beginning in 1952, Sheets also designed the buildings, murals, and mosaics for offices of Home Savings and Loan throughout California. Millard Sheets died at the age of 81 in 1989.

Public Art Committee

City Hall Exhibits

Current exhibitions as of newsletter distribution.

The following exhibits are presented by the City Hall Exhibition Program, a project of the San Jose Public Art Program. All exhibits are free and open to the public. 

The exhibition spaces are located at San Jose City Hall, 200 East Santa Clara Street, San Jose, CA.

Just Opened

 

OrbSWARM. Robotic Orb created by SWARM, an international collective.Photo courtesy of the SWARM collective.

 

Exhibition: Invention: A Celebration of Silicon Valley Innovative Spirit

 

Location: San José City Hall Tower lobby cases

Dates: January 2011- November 2011

 

Video Guitar. Created by Ben Lewry of Visionary Instruments. Photo courtesy of Ben Lewry.

 

Embedded deep in the American psyche is the pioneer spirit, a longing for adventure and a passion for exploration. Central to our nationhood is a deep desire to leave no frontiers unconquered. Surveys and opinion polls taken over the decades reveal an American public with a profound faith in technology, soaring imagination, and a prodigious appetite for the new-fangled. Nowhere is this national spirit of innovation and invention more prevalent than in San José, the capital of Silicon Valley. By turning the spotlight on an eclectic selection of inventors, artists, designers, engineers, visionaries and tinkerers from all over the greater Bay Area, Invention: A Celebration of Silicon Valley's Innovative Spirit gives the residents of San José an opportunity to celebrate their creative regional brain trust and unique identity, one that is envied the world over.

 

  

 

 

 Closing Soon

 

 

 

Exhibition: Lost Murals of Miguel Covarrubias

 Location:  City Hall Wing Galleria 

Exhibit continues through February 2011 

 

Don't miss the last weeks to see this blockbuster art exhibition that features rarely seen murals created by the Mexican painter Miguel Covarrubias for the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition on San Francisco's Treasure Island along with rare examples of Covarrubias' artwork from the private collection of collector and Covarrubias expert Adriana Williams. For details and background information on this rare exhibition of Covarrubias works, go to San Jose Public Art eNews - 9/2010

 

 

 

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