September 2020 ~ Online Presentations & Collections.
Dear subscribers of our monthly events newsletter,
The San Francisco Public Library continues to be closed due to the Health Order. All in-person programs and events have been canceled until further notice. We will keep you updated regarding our reopening date and wish you health and safety during this time. We're working to bring you insights into San Francisco's history and book arts through our newsletter, blog and social media channels.
In partnership with the San Francisco Parks Alliance and the San Francisco Public Library, San Francisco International Airport is proud to present an exhibition of historical photographs by photographer R.J. Waters that date to the early days of Golden Gate Park.
Waters was born in Virginia City, Nevada, in 1856. Already working as a photographer in his mid-thirties, he moved to San Francisco in 1892 and established a photography studio at 110 Sutter Street. Waters would become well known for his commercial photographic work for local businesses, his breathtaking panoramic images of the Bay Area, and his documentation of the 1906 earthquake.
Waters documented daily life in Golden Gate Park between the years of 1896 and 1902, producing a small portfolio of silver gelatin prints that is now held in the collection of the San Francisco Public Library. Read more...
Focus on Collections: Felicia Rice and The Moving Parts Press
Codex Espangliensis: From Columbus to the Border Patrol by Guillermo Gómez-Peña. Collage images by Enrique Chagoya. Santa Cruz: Moving Parts Press, 1998
A small tribute to Felicia Rice and her Moving Parts Press, founded in 1977, legendary in the ranks of California letterpress printers. San Francisco Public Library holds more than fifteen books designed and printed by Felicia, including Codex Espangliensis, and an abundance of letterpress ephemera. It is with great sadness that we report the tragic fire engulfing the entire contents of Felicia’s studio, resulting from the CZU Lightning fire on August 20, 2020.May it rise like a phoenix from the ashes.
View these short documentaries about Felicia Rice and The Moving Parts Press.
For over 23 years William Maynez has researched and lectured on Diego Rivera's Pan American Unity mural at City College of San Francisco, as well as Rivera’s other local murals. As the mural steward, he maintains the mural’s website and writes its newsletter. He has written a one-act Interview with Frida and has just finished a play, Rapsodia en Azul: An American in Mexico, about a 1935 Mexico City party for George Gershwin. He currently serves on various committees surrounding the 2020 SFMOMA-CCSF collaboration.
The 39th annual Northern California Book Awards recognize the best published works of 2019 by Northern California authors. Jack Hirschman, poet and social activist, will be awarded
The Fred Cody Award for Lifetime Achievement and Service (The Award carries a $1,000 honorarium.), and Kim Shuck, San Francisco Poet Laureate, 2017-2020, will receive the Northern California Book Reviewers Groundbreaker Award. Authors will read briefly
from their winning books.
Categories include: Fiction, General Nonfiction, Creative Nonfiction, Poetry, Children's Literature (Younger Readers, Middle Grade, Older Readers/YA), and Translation (Poetry and Fiction). Northern California reviewers and editors, members of the Northern California Book Reviewers, select the awards by reading and discussing the titles merits. All of the nominated books, the NCBR Recommended Reading List of Books Published in 2019, will be acknowledged and celebrated at the ceremony.Read more...
Robert McDonald from Bond Latin Gallery presents Mexico in San Francisco a visual presentation of Mexican artists who were instrumental in a movement blending politics
Through dozens of archival photographs and oral accounts from the neighborhood residents and musicians who experienced it at its height, the Harlem of the West SF Project celebrates this unique and rediscovered chapter in jazz history and the African-American experience on the West Coast. The Project is a platform for the Fillmore’s musicians, nightclub owners and residents of the 1940s and 1950s to tell the neighborhood’s history in their own words, as well as feature rarely seen photographs and memorabilia. The new edition of Harlem of the West: The San Francisco Fillmore Jazz Era book has been recently republished byHeyday Books. The edition features newly discovered photographs and memorabilia, as well as additional interviews with those who lived and played in the Fillmore at the height of its glory.
In conjunction with iVIVA!: Latinx Heritage Month, SFPL is honored to host Benjamin Bac Sierra as our On the Same Page author. We will celebrate this local author, educator, poet, activist and Mission District native. Bac Sierra’s new book Pura Neta, the long awaited sequel to Barrio Bushido is due out in mid September Pochino Press. Benjamin Bac Sierra will be interviewed by Luis Rodriguez, author of Always Running: La Vida Loca and most recently
Set in the San Francisco Mission varrio from 2012 to 2014, Pura Neta explores the creative struggle of Homeboys and Homegirls fighting against gentrification, police brutality, racism and economic and educational injustice. Read more...
Ephemera has been part of Book Arts & Special Collections since 1925 when William Randolph Young, a library trustee, was instrumental in establishing the Max Kuhl Collection of rare books and manuscripts, after the destruction of the Library’s collection in the 1906 earthquake and fire. Through generous donations and purchases, ephemeral matter was filed into the collection until November 17, 1965 when The Grabhorn Collection on the History of Printing & the Development of the Book was officially presented to the San Francisco Public Library. The Collection contained not only books but single leaves of ephemera printed before the 20th Century, some of which were by significant printers of the 15th and 16th Centuries.
From an early age Robert Grabhorn began collecting the works of printers, with an emphasis on French and Italian printers, type specimens, and books on the subject of hot metal printing, and realized that his collection should remain in San Francisco as a teaching collection. Since its acquisition by the Library, the collection has grown to become one of the most important of its kind. It includes examples of almost every major printer, typographer, and bookmaker since Gutenberg’s time, with the allied fields of bookbinding and papermaking represented as well.
The Grabhorn Letterpress Printing Ephemera Collection collection contains 300 archival boxes of ephemeral materials printed with metal or wood type using a letterpress. Ephemeral materials include: prospectuses, notices, fliers, postcards, broadsides, bookmarks, chapbooks, pamphlets and small books/accordion fold books. The bulk of the collection ranges from
The San Francisco History Center of the San Francisco Public Library (SFPL) is actively archiving all types of materials, in multiple formats, to build a collection that documents and preserves the collective experiences of San Francisco residents during the COVID-19 public health emergency.
We are interested in what is happening to you, your neighborhood, your schools and your workplaces. Put on your archives hats and help us capture what is different in our world today, what we miss, what we’ve created to reflect our new reality, and how we are communicating and living now. With your help, SFPL will build a collection that reflects the many ways San Franciscans were impacted by, and responded to, this public health crisis.
All submissions will be preserved in the COVID-19 Community Time Capsule at SFPL and be shared with the public, as well as remain in the City and County Archives of San Francisco (part of the San Francisco History Center), for long term preservation. If you are interested in sharing digital content, please use ouronline submission form. Digital content will ultimately be available through our online collection platforms and social media accounts.
San Francisco
History Center,
Book Arts &
Special Collections 100 Larkin St. San Francisco, CA 94102 415-557-4400sfpl.org/bookarts