In an eight-to-five vote on Monday (3 November), the San Francisco Arts Commission (SFAC) voted to disassemble Armand Vaillancourt’s namesake fountain.
Two days prior, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that San Francisco Recreation and Park Department (RPD) officials stated the fountain posed an “an immediate and serious hazard” and would propose dismantling the monumental fountain and storing it for up to three years, at a cost of $4.4m. The cost is around $2m more than what RPD officials estimated it might cost to demolish the fountain.
SFAC’s decision comes just days after the San Francisco Planning Department determined that the fountain, which was built by Vaillancourt as the main attraction of Embarcadero Plaza in 1971, was a historic resource eligible for preservation under the National Register of Historic Places.
Many members of the public who spoke at Monday’s SFAC meeting supported preserving the monument and keeping it in the plaza. Those who supported its removal often voiced concerns over public safety and health risks.
Eoanna Goodwin, the RPD project manager responsible for the Embarcadero Plaza redevelopment, opened the SFAC meeting by describing the alleged safety hazards and health concerns posed by the monument in its current state. She said dismantling the fountain was a “necessary step to protect the public”.
A report commissioned by RPD earlier this year revealed traces of lead and asbestos in the structure, and further indicated aspects of the structure were either not up to code or merited strengthening. But that report, by the architecture firm Page & Turnbull, did not advocate disassembly or demolition of the fountain, suggesting remediation instead.
“Hundreds of thousands of San Francisco residents live and work in structures at risk of collapse during an earthquake, and are potentially exposed to lead and asbestos on a regular basis,” Bob Pullman, a board member of the Northern California chapter of Docomomo US, a preservation organisation, told the Arts Commission during Monday’s meeting. “No San Francisco agency has declared these conditions as representing a safety emergency […] the city cannot have it both ways. Either we have an unprecedented public health crisis affecting billions of dollars in buildings and hundreds of thousands of people, or the city is constructing an artificial emergency to expedite a park renovation project to avoid its own legal responsibilities.”
Andrew Sullivan, a local landscape architect who worked with Lawrence Halprin, the designer of Embarcadero Plaza, argued that the entire process had been “disingenuous from the beginning”. He added, during the public comment section of the meeting: “Whenever there’s been discussion of national registry designation, all of a sudden there’s a new emergency and the fountain has to be removed.”
The arts commission’s vice-president Janine Shiota and commissioner JD Beltran both said they were casting “painful” votes in support of the motion to dismantle Vaillancourt Fountain. Prior to taking the official vote, several commissioners had sought to abstain but were ultimately compelled to take a position on the matter.
Asked if the public will be permitted to raise funds for the fountain’s restoration and potential rehabilitation, and whether the city would assist members of the public interested in doing so, Coma Te, SFAC’s director of communications, tells The Art Newspaper that the commission “will take no further action until the fountain has been removed and subjected to further study”.
The property management company BXP has been leading a public-private partnership to redevelop Embarcadero Plaza, where Vaillancourt Fountain sits. The company’s plan proposes combining two separate public spaces—Embarcadero Plaza and the adjacent Sue Bierman Park—into a single multi-use space. Vaillancourt’s fountain has not had water running through it since June 2024 and has been fenced off from the public since 9 June of this year.
Whether there is any recourse for Vaillancourt and his representatives is unclear. In September the Québécois artist had sent municipal officials in San Francisco a cease-and-desist letter to block what appeared to be the sculpture’s imminent destruction. Monday’s motion allows for action to be taken within 90 days.
“San Francisco public art was not on the agenda” during Monday’s meeting, Jack McCarthy, a board member of Docomomo US’s Northern California chapter, told The Art Newspaper in a statement. “Instead, the Arts Commission heard a narrative curated by [RPD] based on their non-expert interpretation of an engineering report and a visual assessment by the Department of Building Inspection.”
Charles A. Birnbaum, the president and chief executive of The Cultural Landscape Foundation, an education and advocacy organisation, told The Art Newspaper in a statement: “For years the commission deliberately decided not to properly maintain the artwork and now they’ve voted to pardon and absolve themselves, and by extension the Recreation and Park Department, for their poor stewardship decisions.” He added: “Unfortunately, this is part of a broad and dangerous national trend.”
