The Coit Tower Murals: New Deal Art and Political Controversy in San Francisco

Cherny (emeritus, history, San Francisco State Univ.; Victor Arnautoff and the Politics of Art) takes a deep dive into the controversial creation and enduring legacy of his hometown’s beautiful New Deal–era Coit Tower murals. Sponsored by the Public Works of Art Project, the first of the New Deal art programs, 25 local artists were hired to design and paint 27 large-scale murals and other embellishments throughout the interior of the 210-foot art deco tower, which overlooks the city. Created at the height of San Francisco’s violent Waterfront Strike of 1934, the murals reflect the zeitgeist and are strongly influenced by the contemporaneous social realism style of leftist Mexican painter Diego Rivera. Communist symbols in some of the murals sparked the first of many national controversies over New Deal art that continue to this day.