Past Exhibitions

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Since the web is constantly updating, many of the references to exhibits I’ve worked on in the past have changed or disappeared. Below are images and brief notes about the Underground Comix app and exhibits I’ve worked on at SFSU, Intersection for the Arts, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA).

San Francisco State University Library Special Collections, Labor Archives and Research Center: Dual Views: Labor Landmarks of San Francisco (2015). Wendy Crittenden and Tom Griscom visited a list of landmarks featured in LARC’s Labor Landmarks Guide Book and photographed each in their contrasting styles. Included was a display of tools, posters, and ephemera related to these locations. Essay: “The Fight for San Francisco” on Places Journal. Kim self-published a catalog for this show (Blurb platform), featuring over 50 photos by Crittenden and Griscom, archival photos, and a detailed historical interview with the Labor Archive’s director Catherine Powell.

Comic Art Productions and Exhibits (CAPE): Underground Classics App for iPhone & iPad (2010). CAPE was a partnership between Kim, Denis Kitchen, and James Danky formed to promote their exhibit Underground Classics, find other venues to host the show and develop new exhibits utilizing art from the estates of Will Eisner, Harvey Kurtzman, and Al Capp. While we were ahead of the curve in terms of museum’s interest in comics material, Kim did build a digital exhibit on the Toura platform. There was some controversy, as Apple censored some of the naughty bits. Michael Dooley covered this issue for Print Magazine: “Sex! Nudity! Comix! iPhone App... Censored!” Michael Dooley. Print (on-line) 8/3/11 | The Beat “Apple censors underground comics classics” Heidi McDonald 8/9/11. | “An Uncensored Look at Banned Comics” Michael Dooley Print Magazine. Vol 68, #1 (February 2014)

Intersection for the Arts: Battle Emblems (2006), Terror? (2006), Gate (2006), Determining Domain (2012). These exhibitions were organized by Kevin Chen, with Kim as a historian and researcher. Battle Emblems explored the origins of 13 famous symbols used in labor and protest movements, like the peace sign, the AFL-CIO hand-in-hand logo, and the raised fist. It also included new artwork by Favianna Rodriquez, Jessica Tully, Yaeger Moravia Rosenberg & Marcelo Viana, as well as material from the UOUON Poster Archive (pdf, review from SF Station with photos). It was the Battle Emblems show that inspired me to write several papers on union labels. Terror? opened on 9/11, 2006 showing 8 x 10 artworks by over 250 artists, Kim’s contribution “It Could Happen Here,” is above. Determining Domain was an exploration of appropriation, parody, and other IP issues in contemporary art with new art by Bigface, Scott Kildall & Nathaniel Stern, Sanaz Mazinani, Farnaz Shadravan, Stephanie Syjuco, & Scott Tsuchitani (read more). Gate was a photography installation to be viewed from the street as part of an art walk in Intersection’s Mission neighborhood. It was Kim’s first collaboration with Wendy Crittenden.

Bay Area Now 5, “Syndicate,” YBCA. “Syndicate” (2008) was an ambitious project that featured street stencils of historic photos celebrating unionized art and technical workers downtown and at Civic Center. Walking tours were led by Kim, LARC’s Catherine Powell, and lead artist Jessica Tully. There was also a gallery component that featured an installation by Tully and photos by Wendy Crittenden and Tom Griscom.

San Francisco State University: Eco: Art About the Environment (2005), High 5 (2005), AfroCuba (2005), Witness to War: Revisiting Vietnam in Contemporary Art (2007). Kim worked on these shows as part of SFSU’s exhibition design class. Eco featured art by Chester Arnold, Mark Brest van Kempen, Paul Catanese, Cheryl Coon, Robert Dawson, Amy Franceschini + Michael Swaine, Isabella Kirkland, Reuben Lorch-Miller, David Maisel, Hector Dio Mendoza. Philip Ross, Carol Selter, and Leslie Shows. High 5, which ran in conjunction with Eco, celebrated the re-opening of the de Young Museum with public art in Civic Center and Golden Gate Park. The High 5 were Lewis DeSoto, Ann Chamberlain, Wang Po Shu, Mildred Howard, & John Roloff.

Independently of the class, Kim was hired to coordinate public programming for Eco and High Five with the SF Arts Commission, the Fine Arts Museums, the Stribling Arboretum, SFSU, and KQED. Kim also displayed her own pastel paintings in student exhibitions at the Legion of Honor Museum, including The Jaguar Twins in the Underworld, shown above.

Witness to War featured artwork by Thai Bui, Binh Danh, Harrell Fletcher, Joyce Kozloff, An-My Lê, Dinh Q. Lê, Daniel Joseph Martinez, Long Nguyen, & Martha Rosler. Kim also organized public programs for this show.

Afrocuba displayed the work of 26 artists residing in Havana and Santiago de Cuba, included 60 prints and drawings masterfully executed in a variety of techniques, among them lithography, collagraph, woodcut, screen print, and ink and crayon drawing. It was the last faculty show curated by retiring Professor Judith Bettleheim. Artists displayed were José Julián Aguilera, Joel Aguilera Tamayo, Raúl Alfaro Torres, Belkis Ayón, Diana Balboa, Choco (Eduardo Roca Salasar), Juan Roberto Diago Durruthy, Nelson Domínguez Cedeño, Alexis Esquivel, Roberto Fabelo, Ramón Haití Eduardo, Jorge Knight Vera, Miguel Ángel Lobaina, Raúl Martínez. Manuel Mendive, Ibrahim Miranda, José Omar, Marta María Pérez Bravo, Armando Posse, Rafael Queneditt Morales, Mauricio Reyes Aranda, Arnaldo Rodríguez Olazábal, Elio Rodríguez Valdes, Israel Tamayo Zamora, & Rafael Zarza.

Silent Film Star Monte Blue

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I lived in Hollywood through most of the 1980's. While visiting LA for a conference a couple of years ago, I visited my old neighborhood. One of the things I most wanted to see again was my Uncle Monte Blue's (1887-1963) star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6286 Hollywood Blvd (Hollywood & Vine), where he was enshrined on February 8, 1960. In 1959, he married Betty Jean Munson, my father's oldest sister. Monte was 72 and Betty was 42. I don’t remember it, but my parents told me I was introduced to him as an infant.

Uncle Monte had an all-American rags-to-riches story. Half French, half Cherokee, his birth name was Gerard Montgomery Bluefeather. Born in Indianapolis, he was placed in an orphanage as a child, yet he persevered, making it through Purdue University and excelling at all sports and physical activities. Blue was discovered by director D.W. Griffith while working as a day laborer on the set of The Birth of a Nation (1915). Griffith observed him one day, standing on a soapbox giving a heated speech about capital and labor. Later, when another actor playing the part of a stump speaker wasn't sufficiently inspiring, Griffith remembered Blue and gave him a chance. He continued on in supporting roles until his breakthrough role as the hero Danton in Griffith's French Revolution-era epic Orphans of the Storm (1921) opposite the Gish sisters, Lillian and Dorothy. He was the romantic lead in a long string of silent films through the 1920's. He successfully made the transition into "talkies" and continued to work as a character actor for film and television. One of his best remembered roles was as the sheriff in Key Largo, the 1948 film noir film directed by John Huston starring Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson, Lauren Bacall, and Lionel Barrymore. He retired from acting in 1954. He suffered a fatal heart attack while visiting Wisconsin on business in 1963 (Filmography IMDB | Cyrano Silent Movies).

1920's era postcard found at Paradise Leased.

1920's era postcard found at Paradise Leased.

Uncle Monte owned a house at 1019 N. Roxbury Drive in Beverly Hills. The house was sold to George Gershwin, who lived there for a year, during which he composed Rhapsody in Blue. Later the house was sold to the singer Rosemary Clooney, who kept it for 50 years. It was demolished in 2005. Story/photos at Gershwin House.

My Aunt Betty Munson Blue, his widow, came from a family of artists and trained at the Ecole de Beaux Arts Palace (Fontainebleau, France). After Monte’s death, she opened The Monte Blue Art Center in Beverly Hills on Wilshire near Doheny, a block from the old Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences building at 8949 Wilshire, where she taught traditional oil painting until about 1980. I traveled from Michigan to California several times to take lessons at her school as a child (1971 photo in the slideshow above). Betty attracted many Hollywood clients, notably the comedian Red Buttons, and Alan Hale, who played the Skipper on Gilligan’s Island. She relocated to Seminole, Florida in her later years, where she started the Monte Blue Art Center, teaching painting to disabled people. She died in 1996 (obit in the Tampa Bay Times).

In 2022, a random person emailed me to say “You mention that Monte Blue was Cherokee. There is no documentation of Cherokee membership in his family going back three or four generations. He made it up. His family was of Dutch/German origins and their surname was Blauw, a Dutch name changed to Blue. His real name was not Bluefeather. Check his heritage and family tree by members of his family on Ancestry. No Indian heritage whatsoever.” I have not researched this, and do not know if there is truth to this statement.