Relocation of Bank’s Millard Sheets Mural Under Discussion
By Sameea Kamal
Published: Thursday, December 17th, 2009
Catherine Haskett-Hany has been going to what is now Chase Bank on Lake Avenue and Colorado Boulevard since she was a child, and has always looked forward to seeing the mural of the Pasadena Rose parade on the wall.
When she walked in one day to see it covered up by a wall, she was alarmed that it was hidden.
Haskett-Hany, who is the Communications Director at the Pasadena Library, said the mural is one of the reasons she enjoys going to that bank.
“They’ve made it so it’s very bank-like … and before it was a very special place to go to because you had that mural,” she said. “It didn’t matter how long the line was because you could enjoy the mural and there was always something to learn about it.”
Haskett-Hany then contacted the Pasadena Cultural Affairs Office, who has been working with Chase Bank to find a suitable relocation.
“Having grown up with it, it means a lot to me,” she said. “More people other than (those) who know of it at the bank should be able to see it.”
As a part of reconstructing the branch, the bank placed a wall to create a work area for employees that is out of sight of customers for security reasons, said Gary Kischner, spokesperson for the Pasadena branch.
As a result, the mural is partially obscured to the public.
Kischner said that though no one has complained about the possible donation of the piece, customers have voiced concerns that they were no longer able to see the mural, which was painted by Millard Sheets.
Kischner said the bank tries to keep all of the art within the collection, but if they are unable to do so they try to return the piece to the artist.
“We did speak to Tony sheets, Millard Sheets son, and we’ve been working with Mr. Sheets to find a solution for the artwork,” Kischner said. “We will be donating the artwork, or giving it to the Millard Sheets foundation.”
The mural was originally commissioned by Howard Ahmanson, owner of the Home Savings Bank and a big collector of art, said Chris Nichols, an editor with Los Angeles Magazine and member of the Los Angeles Conservancy’s Modern Committee.
The bank was acquired by Washington Mutual in the 1990s, and bought by Chase Bank in 2008. Though the building was demolished in the early 1990s, the mural and three other art pieces were salvaged and moved into the current building, he said.
“For each of his branches Ahmanson commissioned artists for site-specific works … depicting the nature of the bank,” Nichols said.
The artist, Millard Sheets, a Pomona native and head of the Otis Arts Institute, was an architectural designer who drafted plans for many Home Savings Banks in the 1950s and 1960s – including Pasadena’s, said his son, Tony Sheets.
Millard Sheets created many mosaics, murals and stained-glass pieces. The bank’s piece was painted on walnut paneling in acrylic, he said.
According to Nichols, Millard Sheets was very popular in the 1930s and 1940s, and had many followers who did work similar to his.
Many of Sheets’ works depict life in Los Angeles and life during the Depression Era. Sheets’ works hang in the White House, the Smithsonian, and in the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art.
“(This mural) is at a bank, so it’s kind of private, but it’s a place that everyone can see it and share it,” Nichols said. “It’s something that is very accessible.”
According to founder of the Urban Public Realm Consulting Group Dr. K.M. Williamson, a similar situation with the First Federal Bank’s mural happened in the city of Claremont, which was also by Millard Sheets.
The bank originally wanted to have more signs on their building, but worked with the city’s arts commission and decided to preserve the mural and have a free-standing sign on the corner instead.
“The bank listened to us – we were challenging them to come up with something more sensitive, and they came back n said it’s a gorgeous building and mural,” she said.
Williamson’s firm sponsors the Public Art in Public Places database, which catalogs public art in over 100 cities in the Los Angeles area with basic information on the pieces.
“There is some public art, especially older more historic, memorial or early pieces in a city’s cultural history that is not exactly located in what we understand to be in public places,” she said.
According to Williamson, Sheets did these murals on the insides and outsides of banks throughout southern California.
“Outside (the building) you can argue (the art) is in the public realm for the public benefit, and those pieces were not close to being (bank signs),” she said. “On the inside, for our purposes, we take our cue from the actual city.”
Though public art nowadays is reviewed by city design boards or public art commissions, Millard Sheets pieces were done before those committees existed, designating them as outside of a city initiative, she said.
“The problem is that when a piece of art is in the interior of the building it’s much less public, and Pasadena may be grappling with one of its cultural resources,” she said. “Millard Sheets is a cultural resource, because everyone knows him.”
Tony Sheets, who is the director of the Millard Sheets Center for the Arts in Fairplex, a nonprofit foundation, said that Chase Bank has been very good at working with them to save the artwork as much as possible.
“I’m working on different ideas of where to display it to keep it,” he said. “A number of banks have gone under, many with murals.”
The California Arts Act requires that art pieces be protected by contacting the artist or representative, and that a company may be held liable if the piece is lost, he said.
“I think we’re all trying to work together to protect these pieces,” he said.
A mural painted on the side of ABC Nutrition on Fair Oaks was also recently painted over after miscommunication between the store’s owner, Rosalinda Huerta, and the city’s code compliance department, reports the Los Angeles Times.
The city inspector had left a message with a store employee warning that the building needed to be brought up to code, including painting a part of a wall that had been recently repaired, according to the Times article.
Because Huerta was worried about losing her business permit, she made a number of repairs to the shop, including painting over the mural that had been marred by graffiti thinking that was part of the city’s directive, the Times reports.
The mural, painted by artist Christian Alderete and a number of at-risk youth, had only been up for three months.
However, according to the Times, city spokesperson Ann Erdman said the store owner was never ordered to get rid of the mural.
“There is absolutely no way that that was part of the direction, either written or verbal,” Erdman said to the Times.
The city plans to meet with the property owner and the artist to discuss the matter, the Times reports.
According to Rochelle Branch of the Pasadena Cultural Affairs Office, whether the mural will be repainted or not is still under discussion.
No related posts.
Go to Pasadena Museum of California Art (on Union/Los Robles) to view the important works by Millard Sheets in the 1920s and 30s. Exhibition starts on Feb 14, 2010 till June.