 started. Good evening, everyone. Welcome to our program tonight with Dr. Jacqueline Francis and Virginia Smiley in conversation about Sergeant Claude Johnson in conjunction with a new exhibit at the Huntington in Southern California. We're going to get started in just a minute, but before we do, I have a couple announcements to share. So, I want to acknowledge that the library is located in the area now known as San Francisco, which is on the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ramaytush Aloni peoples of the San Francisco Peninsula. As the original peoples of this land, the Ramaytush Aloni have never ceded, lost, nor forgotten their responsibilities as the caretakers of this place, and we recognize that we benefit from living, working, and learning on their traditional homeland. As uninvited guests, we affirm their sovereign rights as first peoples and wish to pay our respects to the ancestors, elders, and relatives of the Ramaytush community. We also, as the African-American Center, honor the gifts, resilience, and sacrifices of our Black ancestors who toiled the land, built the institutions that established this city's wealth and freedom, and survived anti-Black racism despite never being compensated nor fully realizing their own sovereignty. Because of their work, we are here and we will invest in their legacy. We acknowledge the exploitation of not only our labor, but of our humanity. And through education and outreach, we are working to repair some of the harms done by public and private actors. And you know what? I don't think I introduced myself. I'm Shauna Sherman, manager of the African-American Center. And again, so glad to have you here on the last day of Black History Month. We get to celebrate once every four years on the 29th. So, so happy to see you. We have a few things happening at the library now. And through March, first of all, we have the Torta Black Ascetic Exhibit of Kenneth P. Green Sr.'s photographs of the 1960s and 70s. This is at our Jewett Gallery in the main library as well in the African-American Center. And I really encourage you to come see the beautiful portraits of Black women in the Jewett Gallery and images of the African Liberation Day, March from May 1972 that went through the Fillmore. There's some great shots of what Old Fillmore used to be with people on the streets and everything. It's a really must-see exhibit. It will be up at the main library through April 21st. And then on March 17th in the African-American Center, we will be having a panel to discuss the making and meaning of African Liberation Day with Marvin X and Dr. Obatashaka. They'll be talking, they were actually there at the event that that day and we'll be talking about the meaning of African Liberation Day and its ties to the present. And we also have a reading series. This is the second book we're celebrating in the Sister Sci-Fi series and this author, Titulo Tomase will be in the African-American Center on March 14th. And to talk about her book, Wilm City, I hope to see you there. And we also have an African-American Family Legacy Book Club happening with this program is in partnership with the African-American Historical and Cultural Society. And we're reading Reclamation about Sally Hemings, Thomas Jefferson, and the Descendant Search for Her Family's Lasting Legacy. This will be on Zoom on March 19th. And I hope to see you there. All of these programs are listed on our sfpl.org website under the events page. And last but not least, on Saturday, March 23rd, in the Coret auditorium, we'll be having a program in partnership with the Fillmore Jazz Ambassadors called The Spirit of the Blues. It'll be music, poetry, and blues singing from two to five on Saturday, March 23rd, another great program. So here we are. Now we're here for our featured guests of the night. We've got Dr. Jacqueline Francis and Virginia Smiley who are going to talk about Sergeant Claude Johnson's work. He's an important California artist who's had 43 works of which are on view now at the Huntington Gallery. And Dr. Francis is one of the co-curators of that exhibit. I'm going to read their bios and bring them on to the screen so you don't have to hear me anymore. So Dr. Jacqueline Francis is Dean of the Humanities and Sciences Division at California College of the Arts in San Francisco. She is co-editor of Sergeant Claude Johnson, is now the time for Joyous Rage, and Ramair Bearden, American Modernist. She is also the author of Making Race, Modernism, and Racial Art in America, which is available at the library, and is a contributor to Mary Ann Kalo's African American Artists and the New Deal programs. In 2023, she was named to the Uruguena Center for the Arts 100 in recognition of her activism and innovative projects in the Bay Area region. Virginia Smiley is a retired public health professional who heads the San Francisco African American Historical and Cultural Society's Archive Inventory Project. She is a native of Native San Franciscan, a graduate of Lowell High School, University of California at Berkeley, and UCB's graduate school where she earned degrees in African American Studies, Anthropology, and Public Health. She is the author of 100 Years in Action Booker T. Washington Community Service Center. Her location is historian, and she is an amateur genealogist. So I'm going to bring our wonderful guest to the screen right now, and we'll get on with our show. We're in for a great treat. Welcome, Dr. Francis. Thank you, Shana. I'm going to share my screen. And Virginia Smiley. Hello, everyone. Okay. How's the view for everybody? Okay. Looks good to me. Great. Super. Thanks again for having us, Shana. We're so grateful to the library, and I'm so grateful to have this opportunity to speak with my colleague, Virginia Smiley, because of her work, you know, this project that the Huntington was in part possible. And I really thank everyone who are on the board of directors of the San Francisco African American Historical and Cultural Society. I want to, of course, situate, Ginger and I will situate tonight, this historical African American artist, Sergeant Claude Johnson, who was active in San Francisco Bay Area communities from the time he arrived around 1915 up until his death in 1967. As Shana has previewed, there is an exhibition that opened at the Huntington Art Museum, which is in the city of San Marino, just adjacent to Pasadena in Southern California. And what you're seeing right now are a couple of installation shots of the exhibition at the Huntington Art Museum. You're also seeing at the top left the publication that accompanies the exhibition, simply called Sergeant Claude Johnson, that is authored and co-edited by the Huntington Art Museum's American curator Dennis Carr and me, Jacqueline Francis, located here in San Francisco, and our third colleague, John Bowles, who is an associate professor of African American art history at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. A fourth contributor to this publication, which is out now and available if you go online to Yale University Press' site, is Dr. Gwendolyn Dubois Shaw, who's an associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. So we'll talk a little bit more about some of the objects that you're seeing here on the screen, which are made by Sergeant Claude Johnson. And some of you may have seen Johnson's work not only here in San Francisco at the African American Historical and Cultural Society, at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, at the Oakland Museum, maybe even at the African American Museum and Library. And that's because Sergeant Claude Johnson was probably the best known and the first recognized Black modernist working on the West Coast. That is to say, at the time when his career was really beginning in the 1920s, he was a Black modernist artist who gained national recognition for his work. And in what Ginger and I talk about tonight, maybe you'll see why. So I can't underscore enough the importance of the stewards of Johnson's work over the decades, such as the San Francisco African American Historical Society. They have opened Ginger and her colleagues have opened up their archive to me and I was able to examine objects that are in the exhibition, such as this letter by Sergeant Claude Johnson to his daughter Pearl in the 1940s. The Historical Society also holds a self-portrait of Johnson done at the end of his life, which you see as the middle image here on the screen. And the Society also has reproductions of photographs of Johnson taken during his lifetime. And the photograph on the right is of Sergeant Claude Johnson, his wife Pearl, and their infant daughter also named Pearl in front of their home in Berkeley, California sometime in the 1920s. And so again, I want to underscore how important it is to have institutions like the African American Historical and Cultural Society here in San Francisco that really keeps these historical objects in good shape and available to scholars and curators and all kinds of curious audiences. Ginger, let me give some space to you. Thank you, Jackie. It's been a pleasure getting to know you and you've been so helpful to me in the work that we're doing. I'm doing it at the Society. I came to the Society only since about 2013 when I was doing research for a book I was writing and subsequently have been working with them off and on and have been on the board. And I've taken on this inventory project, which is a passion of mine, to inventory every item that we have in our archive, including our artwork. And the Historical Society started around 1955 with two groups coming together to preserve and to educate folks about African American history, art, culture, and literature. And at the same time when they came together, Sergeant Johnson was well known in the Bay Area, particularly in the San Francisco community, and was invited in 1967 to an open house with him as the honored guest. And you see right here the invitation card with either a reproduction of a painting or a drawing. We don't know what it is. We don't know where it is. We don't know the name of it. I call it lovingly the hands. And you can clearly see Sergeant Johnson's who has written their signature in the year. And we can go on to the next slide. Our collection and we did very frequently, the Society very frequently did have formal exhibits of Johnson's works. There's a list here, but also very frequently the Society loaned the same items out to other institutions that were mounting exhibits. And since the last time we did so was about 40 years. So we're really welcomed the opportunity for the Huntington to show these items and to try to create some interest and support for understanding Johnson, but also other artists of the day that are contemporary with him. We can go on to the next one. We also held a permanent exhibit in our 680 Devisadero in 1447 McAllister Street offices and this was in the 70s. And as you can see proudly exhibited behind a glass display case were some of the very same enamel portraits on steel, one that we don't know what the name of is that's prominently there in the middle on the top. And the mask is there on the left. The letter unfortunately it's not a great photograph but the letter and below that a sketch and over to the right to additional sketches and then another painting that we're not really sure where that be long. In the photographs on the other side proudly shown were the sculpting tools that Sergeant Johnson used and were donated to the society along with tubes of paint which is on that bottom shelf. And we can go on. I think that's it for now. Yeah. I'm going to hand this. Currently these are some examples and you've already seen self-portrait at least twice in this very brief presentation. And these are some examples of the items that society is holding. And both the ones all these three are being shown in the Huntington exhibit and we hope that we'll be able to show these in our own gallery sometime in the future. And I think there's in one more slide. On the left is a reproduction of a photograph that was used in one of the many exhibits that the society had on Johnson. And on the right again is that beautiful and precious letter to Pearl from Dad, Sergeant Johnson. Actually he signs it from Sergeant Johnson, your dad 1945. But that it's it kind of gave you a little bit of an insight into his relationship with his daughter. And that's a beautiful photograph by the way Jackie. Thank you so much for that. I do want to mention that the society received these items from Pearl Johnson. She succeeded her mother and father. And I don't believe she ever married. She did not have any children. So all of these items came to us from her. I believe some of the items at one time may have been also other items that are in the collection may have been loaned by previous society members. It's unclear because I'm doing this inventory of documentation and haven't quite got to all the acquisition documentation at this moment. We I do want to point out. Okay, I think I think is there another slide Jackie after this? This one. Yeah. Again, these are items that we have in the exhibit. And on the right, we do have this lithograph of Lenox Avenue. One of maybe I don't know how many there are several around the nation. We also have several other drawings and sketches that have not been exhibited ever. One being black and white, which is very similar to another sketch that has been shown called Divine Love. And I think there might be a picture of that somewhere later on. I think that's it for now. Great Ginger. So by now you might be wondering a little bit about Johnson's life. As you saw in the introductory slide, he was born in 1888. And in fact, he was born in Boston, Massachusetts. His mother and father were had relocated to Boston from Virginia where they married and met. His father, we think was a Swedish or Swedish American man. And his mother was a woman of color of both African and Cherokee descent, according to the family's records. We say about his dad that he was Swedish because we're not sure if he was born in Sweden or if he was a descendant of someone who had come from Sweden and was born in the United States. And it's been quite the challenge to track Johnson's family history. But do read the exhibition catalog essay by our colleague, Gwendolyn Dubois Shaw, whose name I mentioned early on. She is a real specialist in tracking the history of the Johnson family and Johnson not being an extraordinarily rare name. You can imagine all the Johnson's trying to separate people out. So Johnson was born in, like I said in Boston in 1888, one of several children born to this couple, this interracial couple, who moved from their home in Virginia, where they unlikely face discrimination as an interracial couple and the wife as a woman of color and went to Boston. Johnson's father died in the 1890s, and then his mother died later on in that same decade. So he was an orphan by the turn of the century 1900. The children were split up. Some of them went to boarding schools, including Johnson. For a while, he lived with his aunt and uncle. This is his mother's family in Washington DC. And his uncle was married to this sculptor, May Howard Jackson, who was quite well known from the late 19th century and early 20th century for her realistic academic sculpture. And I'm just showing you an example of May Howard Jackson's work, this bronze sculpture that was made in 1899, but later cast long after her death in 1988. And so you might start to think about the relationship in terms of the work you've already seen by Johnson in sculpture and think about what it meant for this young man to live with this working artist who already had a reputation, certainly in Washington DC as an African-American artist when he was just a young boy. So Johnson, we know, lived with May Howard Jackson and her husband Sherman for only a short period, probably less than six months in Washington DC. And then subsequently, he returned to Massachusetts. We think that he went to a boarding school in Worcester, Massachusetts that he studied art and music at this school. And we also think that he might have studied art at the Worcester Museum as well. Again, the records are not completely persuasive around that early part of his life. And we found no early photographs of him, much less of his siblings and his parents. So Johnson comes out to San Francisco sometime in the mid-1910s. And we think one of the reasons he comes here is because it's a place where there's an international exposition being held, the Pan-Pacific Exposition. It's an opportunity for artists to see not only crafts, mechanical goods, but of course, visual fine arts that are being displayed in the city. Artists like Johnson and some of the people that he would study with were very interested in seeing what were the national trends in terms of artistic production, as well as the international trends. So I'm just showing you here a chromolithograph from that period of 1915, advertising the Pan-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco. And it's a really interesting kind of allegory in terms of the ways that the continents of North America and South America are portrayed as women's bodies that look back at each other. Johnson studied at the California School of the Fine Arts as it was then known. And here's a photograph from mid-century of what was later called the San Francisco Art Institute. And usually in the last couple of months, I've been able to say the long gone but not forgotten San Francisco Art Institute, because some of you might remember that it closed its doors a couple of years ago. But lo and behold, across my text messages and my email today, there's a story that Loreen Jobs Powell and a group of investors have bought that building at 800 Chestnut Street and are planning to open another art institute, whether it's a session. I know it's like not never gone and certainly never forgotten the San Francisco Art Institute. So I don't know if it will become the newest iteration of the San Francisco Art Institute or will it become something with a new name and a new mission. But it looks like it's up and gonna be running again sometime soon. And again, please put any questions you might have or many kind of comments you have about what Ginger and I are saying in the chat. You don't have to wait until the end of the program. I'll say a few things more about Johnson. So he studies art, we think as early as the pre-war, pre-World War I period at the California School for the Fine Arts. And by the 1920s, he's gaining recognition in the San Francisco area. I'm showing you on the left an image of a sculpture by Johnson called Pearl, which we think is a portrait sculpture of his infant daughter, also named Pearl. And again, I'm showing you the historical and cultural society's photograph, a reproduction of a photograph that they have of Johnson, his wife, and his daughter in front of their home in Berkeley. And I'm showing you the presentation of Pearl next to another sculpture that we do know where it is because it's right here in San Francisco at SF MoMA called Elizabeth G. And Elizabeth G is another sculptural bust, a portrait bust of a child. And Johnson was well known for his portraits of children. Elizabeth G was a Chinese American playmate of his daughters in the Berkeley area in the 1920s and 30s. And what you see in terms of this glazed stoneware presentation of this young girl is this sculptural style that some might say, oh, it's very much like what we would expect of Chinese Buddhist sculpture. And yet there are some deviations from it as well. Johnson, as I said, you know, starts to gain local recognition for his work in the 1920s and increasingly national recognition. So I'm showing you another SF MoMA work here, one called Chester, which is on the cover of the Huntington Art Museum's exhibition catalog. And interestingly enough, it was on the cover of a publication that came out in 1931 that was produced by the Harmon Foundation, which was a philanthropy that supported the work of black artists and other black creatives and intellectuals from the 1920s up until the time that it closed its doors in the 1960s. And it's very interesting that this New York Foundation, the Harmon Foundation, found out about Johnson's work, exhibited his work, put his work on the cover of their publication of this exhibition of 1931, and subsequently in their traveling exhibitions of the work of what was then called Negro artists, meaning black American artists, his work was a constant in their traveling exhibitions of the work of African American artists in the 1920s, 30s, 40s, and even later. I'm juxtaposing the work of Chester next to another one of Johnson's better known works, which is Forever Free, which is a paint and wood sculpture, painted wood sculpture that is in SF MoMA's collection. We can talk more about the different kinds of styles and hear more from the audience about how they would characterize what he's doing in terms of his decisions of how to make figures, perhaps during the Q&A. And again, another opportunity for the audience to look at three different kinds of depictions in terms of representational decisions that Johnson makes in terms of his representation of women. And of course we see a really abstract work here on the left, that's in the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and then another work from SF MoMA, and you've already seen Forever Free. Johnson was well known both in the 1930s and thereafter for these copper masks that he starts making sometime around 1930. And what's really interesting, of course, is that we might look at them and think that they are African masks, but they're not because they weren't made for uses in ritual purposes in West Africa. Johnson made them for art exhibition in museums such as the San Francisco Museum of Art, as it was called back in the 1930s. He also talked about that he had studying African art, and yet what he was trying to do was sort of make his own interpretation of African art, kind of styles, and yet make it his own in terms of these figures being informed by people that he saw in his everyday life in the San Francisco Bay Area. At the same time that Johnson was doing this work in sculpture, he also was producing work in two dimensions as well. That is to say works on paper. You're looking at a lithographic work here on the left called Dorothy C, which we think might have been inspired by someone he knew in San Francisco, an arts administrator named Dorothy Cahill. And on the right, I love this drawing that is in the collection of the African American Historical and Cultural Society. It's untitled. I'm not sure about the date. We think it's the 1930s. I can't wait for us to take it out of its frame and look at the back and really find out. But I find this work again another kind of female suggestive form, not unlike the sort of sculptures that we've seen already, and certainly not unlike Dorothy C in terms of it being figuratively abstract, and perhaps not only influenced by African art, but even by North American indigenous art hence the title that we sometimes use to identify it, calling it totem. So Johnson was a public artist as well. That is to say he entered competitions and opportunities to make large-scale artworks. You're seeing one of his important early ones done in the 1930s at what was then called Aquatic Park. It was supposed to be a public bathhouse, and it was undertaken under the auspices of the works project administration by a team of artists. So Johnson made some of the mosaics that you see here on the second-story porch in the building. This is the rear side of the building. And then on the front side, you see these sculpted Vermont green slate facades that he also designed, which are beautiful. This building is now the Maritime Museum. If you're in San Francisco, go down to the Fisherman's Wharf area and do see it. It's fantastic, and it's open, usually limited schedule Thursdays through Sundays. I think my very, very favorite public art project by Johnson is this one called Athletics, which is at George Washington High School here in San Francisco in the Richmond area. And what I love about this work is that it is an astonishingly monumental work, more than 185 feet long and 12 feet high, and it's placed in this amazingly beautiful, beautifully sighted football field. At the other end of the field opposite the frieze here called Athletics by Johnson is a beautiful view of the San Francisco, the Golden Gate Bridge, the San Francisco outer edge of the city, and of course the headlands. And even if you're not a football player, I think you want to strap on a helmet and play because of that incredibly inspiring view. This is a newspaper photograph that was done in the late 1930s and published in one of the San Francisco newspapers of Johnson at work on a clay model for the Athletics frieze. And here you'll see a detail of the sculpture, getting a sense of him making this work in 1942. There's no Olympics in the 1940 schedule or 1944 schedule, of course because of World War II. And what we see that's also interesting in terms of the Olympic theme here is that we're seeing both men and women competing. So this is long before Title IX that Johnson is portraying athletes who are both female and male at the height of their prowess, albeit in a years that there is no Olympic competition because of war in Europe across the United, across the world as well. The last one I'll show is this one that is in the Richmond, California. So city of Richmond here is not Richmond, Virginia, which is probably better known as the Richmond in the United States, but the Richmond here in the Bay Area. Again, look at this strategy that Johnson makes for this sculpture that's called American Pride and Purpose. He creates a map of the Bay Area, specific of course, making large representation of the city of Richmond, situating it in the sort of Bay Area. And then these figures here as if they are kind of explorers crossing the country to come to this West Coast City as either married couple or brother and sister and these sort of idealized youth of a white American imagination in the 1940s. Ginger. I think I covered many of the things earlier about the society collection, but we are very grateful to have recently had these items returned. I think earlier I showed you in the display cases, the sculpting tools that were on display in the permanent exhibit that the society held in the 70s. Well, these were recently returned along with one of the briefcases that Pearl Johnson used. In fact, her name is written on this briefcase. And if you notice the photograph there on the left, I've added the photos that had been taken of the display cases and arranged the tools in the same order they're found in that photograph there on the left and then a little bit of a close-up there on the right. Jackie tells me that were we to work with a bona fide or institution that the materials that are still on the sculpting tools could be analyzed to tell us what kind of materials he was using and a lot of other information that's not accessible unless we do that analysis. But to have the tools back to know that these were touched by a fine artist, African-American fine artist living in the Bay Area, working in the Bay Area is to me very thrilling and is invaluable. There's no price that could be put on these items that represent the fine work and standing that Johnson had not only in the art world, but also in the African-American community in the Bay Area. He was very well known. He was very well regarded. And many African-Americans who could afford it, these would be professional people, doctors, lawyers, educators, purchased his pieces of his art. And this art is at home somewhere very likely the original owners are long gone, but their children may very well have these items. And as we saw my earlier photographs, quite a few items that were displayed and that we know about are missing. We don't know where they are. They must be in the hands of citizens. So we hope that those will come out. And Jackie has already told a story to me that some, because of the Huntington exhibit, numerous items have come to the surface. So this is always a mystery. Working in archive is always like you're an investigator and then you're trying, if you're lucky, you meet up with people like Jackie who help link you to others. And we do this in order to get a full story that we can tell you as we exhibit these items. So I think that my last one, Jackie, I think we go back to you and then the commission. I'll just go here now. The society also is fortunate to have many, many other pieces of art done by local African American artists and craftspeople as well as nationally known artists and craftspeople. And just on this little sample, you have a Eugene White, you have two Tom Feelings, Charles White in the mural, and the carving is a local artist, Montford Cardwell, who also came early in the 20th century to San Francisco and made this his home. And much like Johnson, he was multifaceted. He not only did carvings, but he was a painter, he was a sketch and he did many other things. He played the organ, a man of many, many talents, and shared them freely with the African American and the broader San Francisco community as Johnson did. That's it. Go on, Jackie. So the last thing is just thinking about how artists come in and out of view. And Virginia just talked about how Johnson had a reputation, was known. We saw that he was the guest of honor at a 1960s open house at what was then the Negro historical and cultural society. Now, of course, the African American historical and cultural society, how his work was part of the invitation, and he was recognized. We're so fortunate that there were many, I think, California art historians who kept his work in view. I definitely want to name Evangeline J. Montgomery, who was an art historian who was working in the California, up and down California, both in Southern California and Northern California in the 1960s. And she was one of the people who helped organize an exhibition of Johnson's work after he died, a few years after he died in the 1970s. And Ginger mentioned that exhibition in one of the earlier slides. It's because of art historians, and I think specifically art historians like E.J. Montgomery, like Lizetta LaFalle Collins, who organized the SF MOMA show in 1998. Her colleagues, Judith Wilson, also another California art historian, and even Gwendolyn Dubois-Shaw, who was born and raised here in California, and did her doctorate at Stanford. I think one of the reasons that Johnson is kept alive is because of people who care about and study and research and write about California artists and culture and certainly want to curate shows about California art and culture. I wanted to say that, bring out this article, a reproduction of an article that appeared in the New York Times in 2012. And what it is is a photograph of the organ screen that is now at the Huntington Art Museum in San Marino as part of their permanent collection. And I don't know if some of you know this story. What happened was that in the 1930s, Johnson did a commission, another public art commission for what was then called the California School for the Blind in 1933-1934. And it was one of these early works project administration commissions. And it was one that was extended to artists who were already known and had a reputation. So again, here is this bicultural black identified artist being seen as an important artist who would be able to undertake this commission for the School for the Blind. And I'm showing you a black and white photograph of this organ screen that you just saw on the previous slide in situ at the California School for the Blind in the 1930s. And here it is now in the Huntington Museum's collection. You might ask yourself, well, how did that happen? Well, the California School for the Blind was in Berkeley. And then the campus of this School for the Blind was taken over by UC Berkeley. And some of the aspects of this California School for the Blind commission were kept. Here's another part of the commission done later, a second part of the Johnson did in 1937. Here's a photograph of him, of his backyard in Berkeley where he was working on this wooden screen. And here's the finish screen that is still in the collection of the University of California at Berkeley. However, the one that is in the Huntington's collection now in 2012 was actually in the surplus collection of the Berkeley campus. It had been taken down. The School for the Blind was no longer on what is now the Clark Kerr campus at Berkeley. That school went out to Fremont, but some aspects of the commission by Johnson from the 30s were kept at Berkeley. But this particular screen was unidentified. And so it was part of a surplus sale. Some of you might know that colleges and universities sometimes sell surplus desks and file cabinets and other things that are in campus buildings. And people who are students or who are staff sometimes buy them because they're sturdy and still useful. So, and now the lights go out really eerily. But this screen was not known to be by Johnson. And that's why it was in surplus. And a sort of antiques dealer saw it and found it interesting and purchased it and then realized that Johnson's name was written on it and researched him and discovered that Johnson had been a very famous artist during much of his lifetime. And then subsequently the Huntington bought it. I'm showing you also another object by Johnson that the Huntington has acquired, this beautiful glazed stoneware piece called Head of a Boy, done around 1928. So I'll stop there with those last images from the Huntington collection. And hopefully we have some questions and some points of discussion that we can all engage with for the last minutes of tonight's program. Hi, this is Shauna. There was a question at the beginning about whether or not you thought the exhibition might come to the Bay Area at some point. Please lobby for it to do that. We don't have right now any partners who have offered to host the exhibition, but it would be fantastic. I think if more audiences had an opportunity to see this astonishing work by Johnson, some of it which has never been seen altogether. And it has certain resonance for us in the Bay Area. The African American Historical Society is a lender to the exhibition. The African American Museum and Library in Oakland is a lender to the exhibition. SF MoMA is a lender to the exhibition. University of California Berkeley is a lender to the exhibition. The School for the Blind now in Fremont is a lender to the exhibition. And former San Francisco private collectors are also lenders to the exhibition. So it just seems right that it should have a place here in the Bay Area where this work is shown because it's not only important to all of these institutions, which are all care holders, stakeholders and caregivers to this work, but also because he made his career here. Also, the society is considering holding a very small exhibit in our gallery at 760 Fulton with the pieces that we do have. And because they have not been seen for many, many years, and we hope to bring more people in. We understand the building is going to be retrofit. So this will be our last opportunity to do an exhibit of this type for quite a few years. So we're looking at doing that and also doing several other programs related to Johnson. They're in the building or via this digital format. So look for that. Go to our website. Look for that. Everything is in a planning stage. Okay. Al Williams is noting that there was a program on KALW today on EJ Montgomery. So you may want to go to their site to see if you can hear that story. And I don't know if any other people are reading the chat, but the letter to Pearl from Sergeant Johnson was indeed done on one of the, was it four trips that Sergeant Johnson made to Oaxaca and Mexico? We're pretty sure we can document one and we think that there were more than one. Yeah. And we are also very anxious to take that piece out of the frame, as well as totem, what we're calling totem, because we think there might be additional information on the part of the piece that's under the frame and also in the back, but we want to be very gentle with those frames because they've been on there for over 45, 50 years. I'm trying to scroll to see what KALW had to say about Evangeline Montgomery today. I hope it was something inspiring and informative for us all. She really has been an incredibly important curator of African American art, not only here in the U.S., but also shows that she curated for the State Department that traveled abroad. Jackie, someone is asking for more information on Sergeant Johnson's later life, so probably late 50s through the mid-60s before he died. So, Johnson, as we talked about, we know traveled to Mexico in the 1940s. At that time, he and his wife had actually separated, and he had left Berkeley and returned to San Francisco. We know that he had a studio on Grant Avenue where his friends John and Marjorie Magnani lived and had a work-live studio. And we know that he also returned to take classes at San Francisco Art Institute in the late 1940s, early 1950s. So, if you do your math, he's almost 60 years old, and he's still wanting to learn about art making and some of the work from that period is rather abstract. Both works that were metal sculpture as well as works that were enamel paintings, like you saw a couple of examples of that in tonight's presentation, which I think is Johnson thinking about what does it mean to not only work with this interestingly industrial material of enamel, but also with a sort of abstract tactic of suggesting forms, but not delineating them realistically and naturalistically. And we have several of those at the society, as well as reproductions of others that he did elsewhere. So, we hope that we can bring those to the light. And interestingly, all of those enamel polychromes on metal have a wood frame that I would suggest that Johnson himself did, and it's also painted to correspond to each of the items. If you recall the portrait, the self-portrait, that has a blue painted frame. Some of the metal and the enamel on meadow, the painting scheme is carried out onto the frame. Very interesting technique. So, those are really, I find those extremely interesting and I'm not really, I'm just as a person who's not trained in art, I find it quite interesting that he would go to the lens of building a frame and then painting out over the frame the same images and designs consistent with what's on the inside of the frame. Yeah, for sure. Johnson was a frame maker. It was one of the jobs he held. Like many artists, he was a gig worker in part as well. And he worked at a time when people were still having frames made for artwork. You didn't go into Blick or to other places and there's a pre-made frame manufactured and mass produced. Artists made frames for themselves and for other artists. And that was one of his many skills. He was a frame maker. And those frames tell us so much, not only about his own craft and his own aesthetic, but also about materials in early and mid-20th century America. So, the historical and cultural society has done a great job of keeping those frames around those artworks. Don't let anybody tell you, oh, I got a new frame for you. Let me take this old one away. Those frames are extremely important as historical artifacts and they are also very valuable. Thank you, Jackie. We have that explicitly written into our inventory. Do not remove. Do not! Max is asking whether Johnson had any relationship with Diego. This says Diego Garcia. That is a fantastic question and you are absolutely right to read Diego Rivera's influence on Johnson and on many artists during the 1930s. Of course, Rivera came to San Francisco many, many times with his also his wife and his artist, compatriot Frida Kahlo. In the 1930s, he did a big mural on Treasure Island and he was doing it as part of the sort of programming of that exposition. That is to say, artists as well as audiences came to watch him paint and we are almost sure that not only did Johnson see Rivera painting, but he probably conversed with Johnson. Johnson also had a commission on Treasure Island for that exposition in 1939. He did two large sculptures that were supposed to be allegories of the Incas and so Johnson most almost certainly encountered Rivera there and maybe even later on in Mexico. I think in the book, Sergeant Claude Johnson, the companion to the exhibit, there is a comparison of an image that's there on the Washington High freeze of a woman diving and looking very similar to the same type of image that's in the Diego Rivera Pan America, whatever that very long title is of that piece that he did, which is now in view at the S.F. MoMA, but it originally it actually resides at San Francisco City College. Correct, correct. Yes, so there is a decided resemblance between that backward diving figure, which Rivera based on a champion diver named Helen Sestkiewicz and that's part of Diego Rivera's Pan American mural. And then we see that same diving figure in the George Washington High School freeze by Johnson called Athletics. And Mr. Williams is noting that one of the last things Johnson was working on was the sculpture of a man with arms raised and carved into a fallen redwood. He thinks it's a redwood tree that was in an open area at Webster and Golden Gate streets. Do you know anything about that? You know, a lot of people have talked about that object. We have not seen it. It has been moved. We're not sure if it survived being something that was outdoors all these decades, but it's something that's often been noted in the literature about Johnson, but it's whereabouts are unknown to me. Okay. It was destroyed. Meaning that Mr. Williams was destroyed. Meaning like it was destroyed like or just kind of disintegrated because it was outdoors. He might be typing. Waiting for the answer. Yeah. It's like a game show. Tick tock, tick tock. Well, I, you know, I invite all of you to come and visit us at the society. You may not be able to see the paintings. But coming if you want to find out anything about San Francisco, African American history, please come by, check us out, go to our website. And thank you, Jackie. And thank you, Shawna. Yeah. So many interesting objects. So many manuscripts, ephemera, and of course original artworks that the society has been the steward of for many decades and long may it continue. We are calling your debt Virginia and your coffins as well. Yeah, there's so many great things that the that the society holds. It's definitely a treasure in the city. Thank you so much for this presentation. Dr. Francis and Ginger, I what a great way to end the Black History Month, especially with the theme African Americans in the art in the arts. We have a copy of Sergeant Claude Johnson by Yale Union at in the library. You could check it out or you could find it. I think probably on the web someplace, Yale University. Yes. Oh, you go straight to Yale University. Yeah, Yale University Press. I won't say that other name. I know it's like here it is. There it is. I don't know. We're still waiting for our copies, but we have a lot. So put a hold on it and get it first thing when we get it in. Once again, thank you so much for this conversation and we'll see you next time. Black History Month, keep going. Yes. More than a month. More than a month. Bye all. Bye, everybody. See ya. See ya.