Newsletter of The Friends of The Bancroft Library BANCROFTIANA Number 140 • University of California, Berkeley • Spring 2012 Magnes Acquires Art of Prophetic Justice hanks to a grant from the Koret The Magnes and Bancroft are the first viewer. Schanker and Mechau are well- TFoundation, the Magnes and The public collections to acquire a group of known American artists and mural- Bancroft Library acquired a group of the newly discovered works. ists, whose frescos still grace public works by Jewish Bay Area artist, Ber- The painting of Diego Rivera buildings in New York and Colorado, nard Baruch Zakheim (1896-1985). with assistants working on a mural is respectively. The painting is dated 1932, Born in Warsaw, Zakheim studied particularly interesting among these. the year that all three young artists— art in Poland before immigrating to Rivera is depicted at work, seated with Zakheim, Schanker, and Mechau— America. After arriving in San Fran- his back to the viewer. Two assistants, spent in Paris. Most likely, the scene cisco in 1921, he cofounded a left-wing Louis Schanker and Frank Mechau, is fictional as there is no known mural Yiddish school and supported his are standing in the center, facing the project on which the three artists would family as a furniture designer in the Continued on page 3 city’s Fillmore district. He also founded the Artists’ and Writers’ Union with bohemian poet Kenneth Rexroth. After WWII, Zakheim moved to Sebastopol, where he lived and worked. A protégé of Diego Rivera, with whom he worked for a short time in Mexico, Zakheim is mostly re- membered for frescos he created in the 1930s. These include The Story of California Medicine at the UCSF Medi- cal Center, Jewish Wedding at the San Francisco Jewish Community Center, and Library at Coit Tower. The new acquisition includes sketches for the frescos and a painting of Rivera work- ing on a mural. After Zakheim passed away in 1985, his estate lay dormant in a warehouse until 2010, when the work was photographed, catalogued, and partially exhibited through the ef- fort of Lehrhaus Judaica, the former Judah L. Magnes Museum, and the Fillmore Heritage Center with support and encouragement from the Koret Foundation. The exhibition, “Bernard Zakheim: the Art of Prophetic Justice,” brought to light hundreds of paintings, drawings, and watercolors created by Bernard Baruch Zakheim created this picture of Diego Rivera painting a mural with assistants Bernard Zakheim during his lifetime. Louis Shanker and Frank Mechau in 1932. Newsletter of The Friends of The Bancroft Library From the Director Shakedown Cruise tization projects including the Rosalie Director Todd Hickey has led a two-year Ritz courtroom drawings, 1968-1982; project of the International Association Buenaventura Sitjar’s Vocabulary of of Papyrologists entitled “Building the Indians of the San Antonio Mission, Capacity in Egyptian Papyrology,” to Monterey County, 1791-1797; and provide advanced training and network- reaking in a new Director is hard Felipe Arroyo de la Cuesta’s Vocabulary ing opportunities for the next generation Bwork at the best of times, and the and Grammar of the Mutsun Language, of papyrologists from the US, Europe, and past year has not been an easy one Mission San Juan Bautista, 1815. BTS Egypt. Bancroft will host the final meet- for the State of California or the UC also created a website for “On the Same ing of the group in September, when six Berkeley libraries. Despite these handi- Page” to make it easier for teachers to young Egyptian papyrologists will come to caps, the remarkable Bancroft staff and use material from the exhibit for their Berkeley to receive advanced training. the Friends of The Bancroft Library classes, and it has a site under construc- The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art have done their best, with a rookie at tion to stream video of Cal football and Life, the most recent of the Bancroft the helm and limited resources, to steer games. This year 2,167 Berkeley research programs, has been hosting Bancroft through a year of challenges students attended classes at Bancroft; visiting scholar Jeffrey Shandler (Rutgers, to some notable successes and excit- an additional 49 enrolled in classes at Jewish Studies), who specializes in modern ing firsts. I am most grateful for their Magnes. There were 287 individual Yiddish culture, Holocaust remembrance, wisdom, patience, and advice. sessions taught at Bancroft for a total and media in modern Jewish life. He will Real high points of the year have of 31 courses. Nine courses were taught curate an exhibit at Magnes during his been the opening of the Magnes Col- entirely at Bancroft; two more were stay. lection of Jewish Art and Life and its taught at Magnes. Twenty-two Berke- The editors at the Mark Twain Pa- inauguration as a teaching center; the ley departments and programs were pers and Project are hard at work on the continued success of the first volume supported by Bancroft and Magnes second volume of the Autobiography. Both of the Autobiography of Mark Twain; teaching in 2011-12. In the last twelve the hardback and the reader’s edition of Bancroft’s first LGBT exhibit, “A Place months we served 7,569 readers in the volume one are selling well. Volume one at the Table”; the completion of the Heller Reading Room. is also available online. 10-year, 200-interview “Rosie the Riv- The acquisitions budget, only about The Regional Oral History Office eter Oral History Project”; the Bancroft ten percent of which derives from state finished several of its multiyear thematic Technical Services “Symposium on funds, has remained robust. Notable projects and about a dozen individual Electronic Records Management”; and acquisitions of the year past include oral histories. In addition to “Rosie the Kenji Sayama’s (UC Berkeley Class of the papers of Beat Generation novelist Riveter” (mentioned above), ROHO con- 1942) gift to The Bancroft Library of Herbert Gold; several journals from the cluded the “Venture Capital” project of 18 his Congressional Gold Medal. Gold Rush era, including J. Salter’s di- interviews and the “Slaying the Dragon of On the downside, most Bancroft ary of an expedition from Texas to the Debt” project of 24 interviews. In summer operations are affected by the con- California gold fields; the Phil Frank 2011 ROHO again conducted its Ad- tinuing budget crunch. An enormous archive of Farley comic strips, 1975- vanced Oral History Summer Institute, a backlog of material that Bancroft has 2007; photographs by Ira Nowinski wonderfully successful program that regu- acquired (and continues to collect) will of California Native Americans in the larly receives more applications than it can remain unavailable to patrons until we 21st century; Pierre-Simon Laplace’s accept and has by now some 300 alumni have funds to process it into the col- Théorie analytique des probabilités,1812; from all over North America and beyond. lections. Lean staffing in the curatorial and—in the category of whimsy—the In sum it has been a very good year. and public service divisions is making original Diamond Register from Shreve The state budget may be in the red, and it difficult both to meet the demand for & Co. (1883-1890), a manuscript with the Bancroft Director may be green, but classes taught at Bancroft and to handle charming designs for pieces of jewelry the Bancroft performance, thanks to its su- patrons’ requests for assistance, whether and the names of the San Franciscans perlative staff and Friends, remains golden. online or in the reading room. who ordered them in the Gilded Age. What would you expect at Cal? Even so, we are putting more The research programs continue to patrons than ever in touch with the distinguish themselves. The Center for treasures of Bancroft, both online and the Tebtunis Papyri (CTP) has com- in person. Bancroft Technical Services pleted its NEH multispectral imaging James D. Hart Director (BTS) has completed several more digi- grant (see Bancroftiana 139). CTP The Bancroft Library Page 2 / Spring 2012 Newsletter of The Friends of The Bancroft Library goggles) works with a pneumatic tool on the head of a monumental stone figure; wearing the same blue pants, red shirt, and cap Wight appears again on Stackpole’s right, kneeling on the scaffold. On the scaffold below them a sculptor works with a chisel on the Diego Rivera depicted painters as workers in his San Francisco Art Institute Mural in 1931, titled “Making a Fresco.” have worked alongside Rivera. The idea, or indirectly as advisors and patrons. In however, of representing mural paint- the upper left section English sculptor ing as labor, especially foregrounding Clifford Wight is sharpening a chisel; the variety of individuals involved in sculptor Ralph Stackpole (in a cap with the process, was introduced by Rivera in his famous mural Louis Schanker painted a mural for WNYC public Making a Fresco at radio station, in New York in 1939. the San Francisco Art Institute, which lower section of the stone figure, while had been completed two men in overalls tend a small forge in the preceding and the compressor for Stackpole’s year. tool. At the center of the upper central As the title indi- panel is Rivera, who has painted cates, there is a fresco himself sitting on the scaffold with his within the fresco back to the viewer, holding a paint- showing the build- brush and a palette (www.sfai.edu/ ing of a modern city, diego-rivera-mural). including portraits of Similar to Diego’s whimsical many of the indi- mural at the Art Institute, Zakheim’s viduals who worked painting is not a document of real Bernard Zakheim painted a mural for UCSF Medical School, in San Francisco, work-in-progress.