On Aug. 21, 2024, the Visual Arts Committee of the San Francisco Arts Commission considered approving the installation of an 85-year-old sculpture in the courtyard of the under-construction Student Success Center at City College of San Francisco.
San Franciscans of a certain age will remember this sculpture from a different courtyard at a different institution.
Robert B. Howard’s “Whales” was the centerpiece of brown bag lunches for thousands of school children on their field trip to Golden Gate Park’s old California Academy of Sciences and Steinhart Aquarium.
Talking over the static of the showering fountains, squinting in the glare of the bright courtyard (even on the typical foggy day), and masticating the egg-salad sandwich my mom made me were all part of the experience.
One classmate called them “the hugging whales,” and while they did seem affectionate being killer whales (as we thought) gave them some tough-kid credibility.
When the fountain wasn't running, you could better see the small ocean-relief details on the whales, like the crab "tattoo" visible on the right whale. | SF Arts Commission
Public monuments and artworks in San Francisco have a tendency to move around. The Native Sons Monument was originally at Mason and Market, then put in Golden Gate Park, before landing in its present spot at Market and Montgomery Streets. The Pioneer Monument moved a block. You read about the relocated California Volunteers goddess a couple of weeks ago. Whenever a Bufano or a conquistador proves inconveniently located, it’s shuffled around the city.
The whales have been on the move most of their lives. Howard cast them in black-granite aggregate for the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition on Treasure Island.
Robert Boardman Howard working on his 10-ft. x 16-ft. by 8-ft. Whales sculpture. Howard may have meant them to be pilot whales.
The GGIE had lots of public art, including an “Art-in-Action” exhibit, a massive open studio where fair-goers could watch artists like Diego Rivera create their work for the exposition. The Whales fountain was installed in the San Francisco Building in a double-height room named the “Court of the Whales.”
Whales in the San Francisco Building of the Golden Gate International Exposition in 1939-1940. Note the wide original base for the fountain with the whale-riding figures. | OpenSFHistory/wnp37.03052
When the fair ended, the city stored the whales beside the stables of Golden Gate Park’s Polo Field for fifteen years.
In 1956, Whales was installed in the Academy’s new courtyard. For more than half a century the ebony cetaceans smiled for the tourists and the school kids. They show up in hundreds of families’ slides, photo albums, and home movies.
But then the Academy did a rebuild in 2004. Instead of an open-air courtyard, the institution went for a glass box ready for party rentals.
The whales were evicted and destined for City College of San Francisco, where a “thematic nexus” of Art-in-Action pieces had already been established with Diego Rivera’s Pan American Unity mural, mosaics by Herman Volz, Dudley Carter’s “Bighorn Mountain Ram,” and a giant Leonardo DaVinci head by Frederick Olmsted.
The whales were damaged in their move to a holding yard. Then they were boxed up and put in a warehouse in the Bayview. Then, in 2006, they were transported to a back lot of City College’s Ocean Avenue campus and covered with a tarp for “temporary storage.”
There they sat for 13 years, damaged, with the sculpture’s structural elements rusting in the open air, a restoration price set at $250,000.
Finally, the city moved the whales again in 2019. A conservation service was paid to stabilize and store Howard’s art in an Oakland warehouse.
The seventh move looks like it might be the charm. The Arts Commission and City College of San Francisco now seem to have funding and Whales is on a restoration fast-track.
Considering their history, this is definitely a case of I-will-believe-it-when-I-see-it, but there are attractive renderings of Whales as a (non-fountain) centerpiece for the new building on the corner of Ocean Avenue and Frida Kahlo Way.
Computer rendering of an elevated view of the new Student Success Center courtyard, with Whales. | SF Arts Commission
Relocation was approved by the Arts Commission committee 5-0, with all of the members commenting on how they loved the sculpture’s history.
The target installation date is Summer 2025.
Bring your own egg-salad sandwich.
Thanks to Senior Registrar Allison Cummings at the San Francisco Arts Commission for keeping me up-to-date. She, more than anyone, looks forward to the whales back in public view.
Lisa Dunseth
