Pan American Unity

A Mural by Diego Rivera 

Opening June 28, 2021 at 1 p.m.

Diego Rivera, The Marriage of the Artistic Expression of the North and of the South on This Continent, also known as Pan American Unity, 1940; courtesy City College of San Francisco

Ten years after his first stay,  Diego Rivera (1886–1957) returned to San Francisco in June 1940 to headline the main  fine arts exhibition of the  Golden  Gate International Exposition on Treasure Island. Working on a scaffold in an airplane hangar before a live audience, Rivera  painted  The Marriage of the Artistic Expression of the North and of the South on This Continent, commonly known as Pan American Unity, his last mural in the U.S. The fresco depicts in colorful detail a past, present, and future that the artist believed were shared across North America, calling for cultural solidarity and exchange during a time of global conflict.  Completed with support from local artists and assistants, with scenes of the Bay Area as a backdrop, the mural celebrates the creative spirit through portraits of artists, artisans, architects, and inventors who use art and technology as tools to shape society.

After the fair,  Pan American Unity — measuring twenty-two by seventy-four feet and weighing over sixty thousand pounds — was moved to the campus of City College of San Francisco (CCSF). This was possible because Rivera painted this fresco not on a wall, but on ten steel-framed cement panels. More than half a century later,  an international team of experts  has spent years planning another move. In partnership with CCSF, SFMOMA presents Rivera’s  Pan American Unity  in the museum’s  free-to-the-public  Roberts Family Gallery on Floor 1. On view until 2023,  the mural will  then return to CCSF to be installed in a new performing arts center.