When Genentech Hall opens in January 2003, scientists and staff will likely be awestruck not just by the sheer grandness of the six-story research building, but by a set of stunning chandeliers that will hang dramatically above the second floor atrium.

Designed by contemporary California artist Jim Isermann, the five large chandeliers in deep red and orange will complement the furniture and the carpet made in the same vibrant color scheme. Faculty and staff will be able to enjoy the fiber-optic art while sipping coffee on the second floor, standing on the second through fifth floor balconies or climbing the interaction staircase just opposite the piece.

Honored with a prestigious Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in 2001, Isermann, who received an MFA from CalArts, shows his work in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Europe. One of his public art installations, called "Failed Ideals," can be found on the Blue Line, Fifth Street Station of the metro transit system in downtown Los Angeles, according to the LA metro art department website.

"I am interested in utopian solutions that blur the distinction between art and design through utilitarian application," he reportedly told metro art in 1995. "For seven years, I have hand-crafted a series of work: latch hook rugs, stained glass, hand-pieced fabric and hand-loomed weavings. These crafts, once a part of everyday life, have fallen into hobby shop dilution. The pathos of obsolete populist ideals is translated into handiwork. The handiwork returns these crafts to a fine art context and restores their lost ideals."

Citret captures construction progress
The campus community doesn't have to wait until the Mission Bay campus opens to view new art works. Those who visit the Chancellor's Conference Room or view this slideshow will see black-and-white photographs by Bay Area photographer Mark Citret.

Born in Buffalo, New York, Citret grew up in San Francisco and earned his BA and MA from San Francisco State University. Over the past two decades, Citret has been instructed and inspired by some of the most famous shutterbugs, including the late Ansel Adams, with whom he studied in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Citret, who specializes in architectural photography, was selected among several photographers who submitted their portfolios. His assignment is to capture the creation of the campus for the historical record of Mission Bay and to create a collection to be exhibited to the campus community. Citret is recognized for focusing on the interplay of light on images that the average eye may not find. "As photographers, we may manipulate or direct light upon the subject, but we do not create it in the print itself," Citret says on his website. "If the light isn't before the camera, it is not going to be in the photograph. It is the elemental force of our medium. We rely on our sensitivity to it, and our skill in rendering its qualities."

Citret's work is the first to be commissioned by UCSF as part of a Mission Bay arts program. The new campus ultimately will benefit from the installation of works that are created specifically for the 43-acre teaching and research site. Chancellor Mike Bishop, an avid art aficionado, has pledged that the University will spend 1 percent of construction costs to invest in public art. Considering that the first phase of the campus is expected to cost hundreds of millions, the possibilities for art are both promising and unprecedented at UCSF.

Groups offer advice on art
Two groups are working together to bring diverse art to Mission Bay. A team of art experts serves on the Mission Bay Art Advisory Board, appointed by Bishop in May 2000 and chaired by local art collector Steven H. Oliver. The 1964 UC Berkeley graduate has been a member of the board of trustees of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) since 1989 and a longtime trustee of the California College of Arts and Crafts, which declared him an Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts in 1998. The advisory board also includes Oakland-born Neal Benezra, who in March 2002 was appointed the new director of SFMOMA.

Currently serving as the deputy director and curator of modern and contemporary art at the Art Institute of Chicago, Benezra, who received his undergraduate degree at UC Berkeley and his master's degree from UC Davis, will take the helm at the SFMOMA in August 2002. Other advisory board members are Mary Livingstone Beebe, director of the Stuart Collection at UC San Diego, and Sandra Ann Percival, executive director of the Public Art Development Trust in London, England.

Together, they serve as advisors to the Chancellor and the Mission Bay Art Planning Committee, which includes faculty and staff.

For Professor of Psychiatry Sam Barondes, chair of the campus' art committee, the plan to invest in public art at Mission Bay "represents an historic opportunity to integrate art, architecture and landscape to create a stimulating campus environment."

Barondes says the two groups meet regularly and are working well together. "The art advisory board identified about a half dozen artists from the US and abroad and invited them to look at the location and to submit a proposal, which was reviewed by the board. When the artist decides on the site and presents a proposal, the advisory board makes a recommendation to the planning committee, which then forwards on their recommendation to the Chancellor."

Involved in campus art for more than 10 years, Barondes, who also chairs the Chancellor's Committee on Arts, Honors and Recognition, which works to place art at other campus locations, says that both groups are enjoying newfound financial freedom to bring art to the campus community. He credits the ongoing support from Chancellor Bishop and Haile Debas, dean of the School of Medicine and vice chancellor for medical affairs, for financing the art programs.

Like the Parnassus Heights campus, which recently installed sculpted bronze and nickel-coated benches hand-made by San Francisco artist Lalo Cervantes in the School of Dentistry courtyard, Mission Bay also will offer seating tailor-made for the campus green area, known as the Koret Quad. Roy McMakin, a graduate of the UC San Diego art department who created the furniture for the Museum of the Getty Center in 1998, is working on a series of benches, chairs and other objects to be located around the perimeter of the quad. McMakin will use various materials, such as stone, wood and bronze, to fashion the furniture and other fixtures.

Balkenhol to create sculpture
German sculptor Stephan Balkenhol, an internationally recognized artist whose work typically involves carving people and other objects from wood, will create a significant piece at Mission Bay.

Benezra, who wrote "Stephan Balkenhol: Sculptures and Drawings," first encountered the artist's sculpture in an exhibition in 1988. "Simply put, I had never seen sculpture of this kind before: common men, women, and, yes, animals as the subject matter, rendered so memorably," he wrote. "The more I saw of Balkenhol's work... the more convincing was the artist's ability to make sculpture of quality and timeliness that could also communicate with a broad audience."

For UCSF, Balkenhol will carve a set of four figures, each facing a different direction, from one large tree trunk. The figures will stand 8- to 10-feet tall and will be located in the 80-foot atrium space of the Campus Community Center, which was designed by world-famous architect Ricardo Legoretta.

While the initial strategy is to commission works of art that will be permanent and site-specific, the goal of the Mission Bay art program also is to purchase and mount exhibitions of loaned art, according to Assistant Chancellor Susan Montrose, a member of the planning committee. Some funds have been set aside for acquiring works once appropriate exhibition space has been identified. The campus may be ale to arrange to borrow works from local museums, galleries and other institutions.

Other projects are in the works, including commissioning a highly acclaimed artist to create a signature, site-specific work for the main entry Plaza along Third Street.

"Art at Mission Bay will be quite varied and quite spectacular," Barondes says. "We're getting good advice."

Source: Lisa Cisneros

Last updated January 28, 2005

A Slide Show

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Pilings April 19, 2000