Diego Rivera’s Pan American Unity

Diego Rivera's 1940 Pan American Unity, recently moved from the City College of San Francisco to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, raises questions about murals' site-specificity. Because of the artist's and mural's shared transborder status, I forge a place-based analysis to evaluate local knowledges that the artist and viewers brought to the mural over time. The physical mural's trajectory is overlaid by Rivera's grappling with place within the painting's imagery. The San Francisco Bay represents Rivera's and his audience's positionality, while scenes of ancient Tenochtitlan balance those of modern California. The mural's central, imposing figure references ‘the marriage’ of ‘North’ and ‘South’ that Rivera took as his theme, which the artist considered urgent against the spread of fascism. Finally, the mural's massive size and unusual formal arrangement draw attention to the artwork’s surface as another spatial, even cinematic dimension suffused by montage. Ultimately, Pan American Unity forces a consideration of what kind of place is a mural?