A lawyer representing the artist Armand Vaillancourt has despatched a cease-and-desist letter to the Metropolis of San Francisco in response to the controversial plan to demolish the 96-year-old artist’s namesake Brutalist fountain at Embarcadero Plaza. The 1971 Vaillancourt Fountain is threatened by a public-private redevelopment scheme that goals to remake the plaza and join it to an adjoining metropolis park. A latest public outcry has referred to as for the distinctive work’s preservation.
Although the redevelopment effort is being coordinated by the town’s Recreation and Parks Division (Rec), the fountain is technically owned by the San Francisco Arts Fee (SFAC). As beforehand reported by Sam Whiting within the San Francisco Chronicle, Rec’s normal supervisor despatched a letter to high officers of the humanities fee on 18 August asking for SFAC to “proceed with the formal deaccession of the Vaillancourt Fountain from the Civic Artwork Assortment and its elimination from Embarcadero Plaza”. The town had already decided that the monumental fountain was hazardous and fenced it off.
The latest letter from Vaillancourt’s lawyer, dated 29 August, calls for “that the town and all different events implicated within the redevelopment of Sue Bierman Park and Embarcadero Plaza instantly stop and desist from taking any steps in anyway that will endanger or harm the Vaillancourt Fountain”, together with “demolition, dismantlement or bodily modification of the work”.
Jack McCarthy, an area museum employee and board member at Docomomo—a non-profit dedicated to the research and safety of Modernist structure—isn’t satisfied that the town is dealing with the fountain subject in good religion. “If hundreds of native, nationwide and worldwide voices proceed to be ignored, it’s unclear if any quantity of neighborhood suggestions or knowledgeable enter would trigger the undertaking to vary course,” he tells The Artwork Newspaper. “It additionally raises the query of whether or not San Francisco Recreation and Park Division is fulfilling its obligations to the general public and following the established procedures for public and stakeholder enter.”
Whether or not the town heeds Vaillancourt’s letter, or if SFAC listens to the rising refrain of voices against the proposed demolition of Vaillancourt Fountain, stays to be seen. Irrespective of those choices, consultants appear to agree that the town, Rec and SFAC have collectively broken their reputations of their dealing with of the scenario.
“The San Francisco Arts Fee might honour their dedication as stewards of artwork held in public belief, or they may vote to deaccession the Vaillancourt Fountain—an motion tantamount to a demolition allow,” says Charles A. Birnbaum, the president and chief government of the Cultural Panorama Basis. “However they’ll’t do each and count on their legitimacy not to be completely harmed.”
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