Upcoming Events from the California Historical Society

The Polar Adventures of a Rich American Dame: A Life of Louise Arner Boyd

Wednesday, May 2, 2018, 6:00 PM
California Historical Society, San Francisco
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Born in San Rafael, in the late 1880s to a gritty mining magnate who made his millions in the California gold rush and a well-bred mother descended from one of New York’s distinguished families, society beauty Louise Arner Boyd was raised during a glittering era. She was presented at the British royal court, and travelled in genteel style from one dazzling capital to another.

After inheriting a staggering family fortune in her thirties, Louise Arner Boyd (1887-1952) began leading a double life. Over the next three decades, she achieved international notoriety as a rugged and audacious polar explorer while maintaining her flamboyant lifestyle as a leading philanthropist and society woman. Yet, despite organizing, financing and directing seven daring Arctic expeditions between 1926 and 1955, she is virtually unknown today.

¡Murales Rebeldes! Film Series Part II: Mur Murs

Tuesday, May 8, 2018, 6:00 PM
California Historical Society, San Francisco
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After returning to Los Angeles from France in 1979, Agnès Varda created this kaleidoscopic documentary about the striking murals that decorate the city. Bursting with color and vitality, Mur Murs is as much an invigorating study of community and diversity as it is an essential catalog of unusual public art.

Central America(n)s in San Francisco: History, Legacy, and Art

Thursday, May 17, 2018, 6:00 PM
California Historical Society, San Francisco
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Immigration and migration are key themes seen within murals across the state of California. In San Francisco, tropes, histories, and stories of life and war in Central America are visible on the walls of the city, from the historic Balmy Alley and beyond.

Join Dr. Carlos B. Córdova, Professor of Latino Studies at SFSU; Josué Rojas, executive director of Acción Latina; and Mauricio E. Ramirez, PH.D.C  in Latin American and Latinx Studies at UC Santa Cruz for an evening that explores the history and impact of Central American immigration to San Francisco and the broader Bay Area and learn how art, historically and contemporarily, has been, and continues to be, a powerful tool to share the truth, history, and stories of Central America(n)s.

City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles 1771-1965

Wednesday, May 23, 2018, 6:00 PM
California Historical Society, San Francisco
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Los Angeles incarcerates more people than any other city in the United States, which imprisons more people than any other nation on Earth. This book explains how the City of Angels became the capital city of the world’s leading incarcerator. Marshaling more than two centuries of evidence, Kelly Lytle Hernández (Professor of History and African American Studies at UCLA) unmasks how histories of native elimination, immigrant exclusion, and black disappearance drove the rise of incarceration in Los Angeles. In this telling, which spans from the Spanish colonial era to the outbreak of the 1965 Watts Rebellion, Hernández documents the persistent historical bond between the racial fantasies of conquest, namely its settler colonial form, and the eliminatory capacities of incarceration.

Docent Tours of the Old U.S. Mint

Old U.S. Mint
88 5th Street, San Francisco
Saturday, May 12, 2018, 1:00 PM
Friday, May 25, 2018, 3:00 PM
Saturday, June 9, 2018 1:00 PM

Journey through 150 years of history with a trained CHS docent who will share unique stories, discuss the architecture, and answer questions about the Old U.S. Mint.

¡Murales Rebeldes! L.A. Chicana/o Murals under Siege

On View Through September 16, 2018
California Historical Society
678 Mission Street, San Francisco
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Murals became an essential form of artist response and public voice during the Chicana/o Movement of the 1960s and 1970s. They were a means of challenging the status quo and expressing both pride and frustration at a time when other channels of communication were limited for the Mexican American community. Because they threatened established authority, Chicana/o murals were often censored, neglected, whitewashed, or destroyed.

Through photographs, sketches, documents, film footage, and even rescued fragments, ¡Murales Rebeldes! tells the stories of eight murals—by Barbara Carrasco, Yreina D. Cervántez and Alma López, Roberto Chavez, Ernesto de la Loza, Willie F. Herrón III, Sergio O’Cadiz Moctezuma, and East Los Streetscapers (David Botello, Wayne Alaniz Healy, and George Yepes)—whose messages were almost lost forever. ¡Murales Rebeldes! illuminates the important history of Chicana/o murals and celebrates the power of urban art.

¡Murales Rebeldes! was organized by the California Historical Society and LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes and made possible through lead grants from the Getty Foundation. Major funding is provided by the Annenberg Foundation and the Ratkovich Company.

The exhibition originated as part of the Getty initiative Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, a far-reaching and ambitious exploration of Latin American and Latino Art in dialogue with Los Angeles. The presenting sponsor was Bank of America.

Learn more about the exhibition and companion publication at http://www.muralesrebeldes.org.

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