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San Francisco Chronicle
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
S.F. fountain's 95-year-old creator returns: ‘I'm here to save that piece of art'
The creator of the giant Vaillancourt Fountain at San Francisco's Embarcadero Plaza is aware that he may never see it restored to its former glory with water gushing through its white concrete pipes and channels. But dry and dingy as it is, the monumental artwork has been there for nearly 55 controversial years, and Armand Vaillancourt says it can last another 55 at least. That is why Vaillancourt, 95, made the six-hour flight from Montreal to San Francisco this week. 'I'm here to save that piece of art,' he said in a thick Quebecois accent while sitting in the sun Tuesday admiring his work. The 40-foot-tall, 710-ton fountain, installed in 1971 next to the Embarcadero Freeway, has survived a legion of critics over the decades who decried its blocky Brutalist aesthetic. It also survived the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, which damaged the freeway beyond repair. But its supporters, including Vaillancourt, fear it may not survive the pending transformation of the park that surrounds it. An ambitious $30 million project is underway to dramatically redesign Embarcadero Plaza, formerly known as Justin Herman Plaza, and link it to the adjacent Sue Bierman Park. The effort was announced last November by then-Mayor London Breed, and endorsed by the Board of Supervisors in March. A preliminary rendering published with the announcement did not show the fountain. That got the attention of Vaillancourt's daughter Oceania, who informed her father. The project is still in the planning phase. No design decisions have been made, no public hearings have been held, and Vaillancourt said no representative of the city has reached out to him. But he did not like what he did not see on the renderings. So he booked his own flight and booked his own preemptive hearing this week with the staff of the San Francisco Arts Commission, which owns the sculpture as part of the Civic Art Collection. 'They made the new plan and my monumental sculpture is not there,' said Vaillancourt. He described his message to city staff as, 'Be reasonable. Let that artwork live forever.' 'This survived a 7.1 earthquake with no damage, not a scratch, but they never took care of it,' he said. 'There's nothing wrong with it except the dirt.' San Francisco Recreation and Park Department officials told the Chronicle that they had met with Vaillancourt on Wednesday. 'It was an initial conversation focused on listening and exploring ways we might work together going forward,' said spokesperson Tamara Aparton. She said the park department spent an average of $100,000 per year on maintenance of the fountain, which includes repairing persistent leaks and clogged drains, servicing the pumps, removing debris and cleaning graffiti. But the only recent sign of attention Vaillancourt said he could see was a high fence on the Embarcadero side, an apparent attempt by the city to keep people from sleeping on the sculpture. While he was there Tuesday, a security guard came and rousted people who seemed to be setting up camp. He had not visited the fountain in eight years, and his first reaction upon seeing it was to utter: 'Wow.' 'The joy,' he said. 'It is so powerful.' The fountain's sheer size is part of its artistic power — and a major issue in deciding its fate. Part of the civic discussion is whether it can be moved to another location in the city, or put into storage. Vallaincourt laughed at that idea. The fountain, which took him four years to build, is anchored to a foundation 40 feet deep and has steel cables running throughout. It was intended to shift and sway but never break, and did not even burst a pipe during the Loma Prieta quake. However, it eventually blew a pump, and last summer the water was turned off. It would cost millions to repair, but Vaillancourt said it would cost millions more to demolish the fountain and backfill the huge crater that would leave behind. He endorses whatever plan the city has for the plaza, which is likely to remove the brick and replace it with grass and trees or other natural elements. He said the fountain will go perfectly amid all of this, provided it is sandblasted to return it to its original white luster, and the water is turned back on. (When it was installed, the flow at 30,000 gallons a minute was intended in part to drown out the traffic noise from the adjacent freeway.) 'If you keep the sculpture like it is, people cannot enjoy it,' he said. 'When the water is on, the kids run through it. It's a big toy in a sense.' The redesign and renovation is a partnership between the Recreation and Park Department, the Downtown SF Partnership and BXP (formerly Boston Properties), the commercial real estate firm that owns the four Embarcadero Center office buildings east of the plaza. One community outreach meeting has been held by the park department, and a second one is to be scheduled sometime this spring or summer. Vaillancourt said he has done his own community outreach and claimed that 'all of the people we talk to, engineers and architects and all that, they say do anything in the park but don't touch Vaillancourt Fountain.' Skateboarders, who like to thrash up the concrete benches, don't want it touched. Neither do the members of the Northern California chapter of Docomomo US, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving the architecture of the modern movement. They will host an informal picnic at 4 p.m. Friday at the fountain, with Vaillancourt promising to attend and engage in any form of conversation or debate. With his distinctive flowing white hair and beard, he describes himself as a 'small tiger,' and though he will be 96 in September, 'all my life I've never said I'm tired,' he said. Then he leaned back to admire his creation and started singing a song that was popular when he was building it, with his wife, Joanne, and son Alexis looking on. 'All we are saying, is give peace a chance.'
Fox News
13-03-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
Gavin Newsom responds to claims he secretly helped fund his own bronze bust: 'Free tinfoil hat'
California Governor Gavin Newsom has responded to claims that he secretly helped fund a nearly $100,000 bronze bust of himself that sits inside San Francisco City Hall, calling them "categorically false." "To imply the Governor personally funded or proposed this effort is categorically false," a spokesperson for Newsom said in a statement to Fox News Digital. "As is customary in the city, the effort was independently proposed by a nonprofit and funded by private donors — not taxpayers… This was reported at the time and isn't news now." A new book, written by Susan Crabtree and Jedd McFatter, and titled "Fool's Gold: The Radicals, Con Artists, and Traitors Who Killed the California Dream and Now Threaten Us All," claims Newsom used something called "behested payments" – or contributions from donors that politicians ask them to make on their behalf – to help fund the statue. The book claims two companies owned by Newsom donated about $10,000 to a non-profit to help pay for the bronze bust on a black granite base that is meant to commemorate Newsom's time as mayor of the city. The Democrat was mayor of San Francisco from 2004 to 2011. "Businesses tied to the Newsom family made a modest contribution to the privately funded initiative and raised funds for the effort as reported publicly at the time," Newsom's office said. "The contributions were not in any way 'secret' as falsely claimed by some now." Back in 2015, San Francisco news outlet SFGate reported that Newsom called the bust a "strange thing," and quoted him as saying: "I'm just awkward about it... But now the word is out." Newsom told SFGate the bust was the brainchild of his supporters and that it would be paid for with private funds. According to the outlet, Newsom said he didn't even know who the supporters and fundraisers were. The outlet also reported that Newsom sat for the bust with artist Bruce Wolfe multiple times. The work was finished in 2018, according to the San Francisco Arts Commission. Newsom's office went on to blast the book itself, telling Fox News Digital:"This publication should come with a free tinfoil hat, a lifetime subscription to InfoWars, and a VIP dinner with Elvis Presley and Bigfoot. The authors seem allergic to basic facts — especially the kind you can confirm with a 10-second Google search, like how many children the Governor has." Crabtree, one of the authors of the book, told Fox News Digital that the book never claims that Newsom organized the bust, and that they stand by their reporting on the project. According to the San Francisco Arts Commission, the bust includes a bronze plaque with the following quote from Newsom: "If you distill the essence of everything, what life is about, every single one of us is given a short moment in time on this planet and we all have one universal need and desire, and that is to love and be loved." Newsom's office also pointed out that his bust sits next to several other busts of former city mayors, including Willie Brown, Dianne Feinstein and George Moscone. Not surprisingly, the internet erupted with reaction to the bust – with many blasting Newsom. "Who commissions a bust of themself? Gavin Newsom who clearly thinks very highly of himself," one user wrote on X. "That's just kind of sick from a politician's head. Look at me and see how great I am!" "Gavin Newsom's new bust is the perfect symbol of his time as governor," another user wrote. "Expensive and ultimately [u]seless for the people of California." "San Francisco needs a Bust Reduction! $97K Newscum Vanity Project," another user remarked. Newsom has emerged as somewhat of a darling for the Democrat party. He served as a surrogate for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris during their 2024 campaign. He is considered a top contender to run for president in 2028.
