Miranda Bergman

Miranda Bergman is an American contemporary muralist born in 1947 and grew up in grew up in the San Francisco Mission District where she attended Balboa High School.^[1] Bergman is known for of the seven women artists who in 1994 created the MaestraPeace mural,^[2] the largest mural in San Francisco, which covers The Women's Building. Most of the murals created/co-created by Bergman straddles artistry and social activism, giving her a space to express both social struggles and cultural celebrations. She now lives in Oakland.^[3]

San Francisco Women's Building

Work

In the 1970s, she joined other artists such as Jane Norling and Peggy Tucker in the Haight-Ashbury Muralists; this was a group formed during protests against the Vietnam War.^[4] From 1972 to 1976 Bergman created labor-themed posters with Norling for the Working Peoples' Artists collective.^[5] In 1978, She worked on a CETA-funded project with young women in the city's Juvenile Hall to paint murals inside their own cell doors, as part as other parts of the jail.^[4]

In 1986, Bergman worked with Juana Alicia, Hector Noel Méndez, Ariella Seidenberg, and Arch Williams to create the mural El Amancer (The Dawn) in a park in Managua, Nicaragua.^[6][7] Bergman and Alicia completed part of the work in the middle of the night, guarded by armed teenagers and "working in spite of the threat of a U.S.-backed Contra attack."^[7]

Her South Africa-themed photo collage was included in the Syracuse Cultural Workers' 1987 calendar.^[8]

She worked and lived in the Palestinian city of Ramallah for nine weeks in 1989 with three other Jewish-American women artists and teachers as part of the Break the Silence mural project.^[9] The mural they created together is in the Popular Arts Center in Ramallah, Palestine.^[10] Bergman's poster Tribute to Palestinian Women was included in the 1989-1990 traveling exhibition In Celebration of the State of Palestine and is now part of the digital collection of The Palestine Poster Project Archives.^[11]

In 1984 she co-created "The Culture Contains the Seed of Resistance That Blossoms into the Flower of Liberation" with O’Brien Thiele, the last intact mural among the famed PLACA murals of Balmy Alley in San Francisco.^[12] This mural depicts a naturally beautiful landscape contrasted against women holding photographs of desaparecidos.^[13] Aside from that, Bergman has worked on other murals during her time with the PLACA in the San Francisco Bay Area.^[14][15] In the 1990s, Bergman was also a consulting editor of Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies.^[16]

Bergman participated in the May, 2017 San Francisco SOMArts Cultural Center's exhibition, "Shifting Movements: Art Inspired by the Life and Activism of Yuri Kochiyama (1921-2014)."^[17]

Publications

• Community Murals An International Visual Arts Magazine, Volume 12, No. 1 (Spring 1987)
• Maestrapeace Art Works (2000)

References

1. Hoke, Mateo (September 13, 2012). "Painters Scale Women's Building to Restore the "MaestraPeace" Mural". MissionLocal.
2. "PBS: The New Americans". PBS. Retrieved March 7, 2014.
3. Garcia, Janelle (Fall 2014). "The Last Mural Standing". Xpress Magazine. Retrieved 8 March 2015.
4. Barnett, Alan (1984). Community murals: the people's art. Philadelphia : Art Alliance Press ; New York : Cornwall Books. Retrieved 9 March 2015.
5. Goldman, Shifra M. (1994). "A Public Voice: Fifteen Years of Chicano Posters". Dimensions of the Americas: Art and Social Change in Latin America and the United States. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press. p. 175. ISBN 0-226-30124-9.
6. Blandy, Doug E.; Congdon, Kristin G., eds. (1991). Pluralistic Approaches to Art Criticism. Popular Press. ISBN 0879725443. {{cite book}}: |first2= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
7. "Remembering the Mission: A Reflection". Juana Alicia. Retrieved March 11, 2015.
8. "Teaching Resources: Colorful catalog". Feminist Teacher. University of Illinois Press. 2 (2): 44. 1986. JSTOR 40545510.
9. Bergman, Miranda; Redman, Dina; Greene, Susan; Tobias, Marlene (Fall 1990). "Painting for Peace: Break the Silence Mural Project". Bridges. Bridges Association. 1 (2): 39–57. JSTOR 40358476.
10. "Palestinian Women Nurturing the Intifada". The Palestine Poster Project Archives. 15 December 2010. Retrieved March 11, 2015.
11. "In Celebration of the State of Palestine/La Pena (Press Sheet)". The Palestine Poster Project Archive. 3 November 2010. Retrieved March 11, 2015.
12. Jones, Carolyn (September 9, 2014). "Mission District mural fades after 30 years, but message doesn't". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved March 7, 2015.
13. Cordova, Cary (December 2005). "The Heart of the Mission: Latino Art and Identity in San Francisco" (PDF). University of Texas at Austin. p. 318. Retrieved 8 March 2015.
14. Wolfe, Eli (10 October 2013). "The It List: 5 things to do in Berkeley this weekend". Berkeleyside. Retrieved 8 March 2015.
15. Pimentel, Benjamin (27 September 2011). "Kenyan Nobel Peace Prize winner linking arms with Filipino hero". Philippine Daily Inquirer. Retrieved 8 March 2015.
16. "Front Matter". Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies. 12 (3): i–viii. 1991. JSTOR 3346638.
17. "Exhibition of Art Inspired by Yuri Kochiyama". www.rafu.com. 27 April 2017. Retrieved 2017-07-05.