Miguel Covarrubias' Missing Mural

This article was written for the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco blog about a recent acquisition.

You never know what you have until it’s gone. This axiom rings true for even some of the most impressive art works. Although making impacts in many aspects of art and culture, Mexican “Renaissance man” José Miguel Covarrubias—while celebrated widely in his own country—remains virtually unknown to the general American public. Perhaps because of this failure, on the part of American officials, to recognize Covarrubias as one of the great artists of Mexico, one of his anthropological murals has been missing for almost fifty years.

Covarrubias began his career in New York City speaking very little English, but soon his caricatures and paintings were frequently featured in Vanity Fair and The New Yorker magazines. He designed costumes for various theatrical shows including La Revue Negre starring Josephine Baker. Then, having made a name for himself in the art world and in celebrity circles alike, Covarrubias returned to his home country and settled down on the edge of Mexico City. His home came to be known as a nest for intellectuals, celebrities, artists and business magnates including Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, Amelia Earhart, Georgia O’Keefe and Nelson Rockefeller. Covarrubias also found time to cultivate his passion for the culture of the Olmecs, a pre-Columbian people living in south-central Mexico. He even developed theories about their culture that preceded professional archaeologists’ discoveries.

Having gained a significant place in the art world, Covarrubias was asked to produce six large murals for the Golden Gate International Exposition on Treasure Island—meant to celebrate the completion of the Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge—depicting natural history, art history, culture, economy and means of transportation. Each mural would serve as a kind of introduction piece highlighting each concept of the fair’s “Pacific” theme. After the close of the fair, the murals were packed up and shipped to the American Museum of Natural History in New York. However, when it was decided that the murals would occupy the newly built Ferry Building eighteen years later, one of the six maps was reported missing upon their return to San Francisco.

Since the reported loss of the mural, the five remaining murals have similarly received little to no attention. Covarrubias-enthusiasts have accused the Bay Area public and San Francisco officials of neglecting and showing a general apathy for the murals. In 2001, for instance, the, by then, grimy murals were removed from the Ferry Building and put into storage. Part of the problem is the sheer size of the murals. Art critics have raised the theory that perhaps a board of nonprofit citizens furtively disposed of the sixth mural merely because the Ferry Building could only house five; but it has generally been thought unlikely that anyone would so carelessly throw away a work of art that has been appraised as worth over $1 million.

Fortunately, the murals have been restored in Mexico City under supervision of conservators of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. The de Young has recently acquired one of the murals, entitled “The Fauna and Flora of the Pacific,” which currently hangs in the Art of the Americas gallery. The mural’s huge size only gives a taste of what the complete set must have looked like all together, yet the whereabouts of the missing sixth to this day remains a mystery.