As a young woman, Guadalupe Rivera Marin hated being introduced as Diego Rivera’s daughter.
“I wanted to be myself,” she said. Motivated to escape the shadow cast by her father Diego — the internationally renowned muralist who later married Frida Kahlo — Rivera Marin forged a career in Mexican politics.
But now, at age 90 and retired, she has embraced her illustrious origins, and is determined to preserve her dad’s memory.
“All the publicity that has surrounded Frida Kahlo has sometimes placed my father in a secondary place, when really, Frida was never a good painter,” said Rivera Marin about her late stepmother.
Artistic preferences aside, Rivera Marin is now helping to raise funds for the gallery that will bear her father’s name when San Francisco’s Mexican Museum opens at its new location in Yerba Buena Gardens in 2018.
The “Diego Rivera Gallery” and the “Nelson A. Rockefeller Gallery” will be the first two of 13 galleries that will be showcased in the new museum location.
Rivera Marin and Ann Rockefeller Roberts, both longtime museum supporters and trustees, have committed to raising $3 million each for the galleries to be named in honor of their fathers.
Nelson Rockefeller, who served as the governor of New York and later as vice-president of the United States under Gerald Ford, was an avid collector of Mexican art, especially pre-Columbian and colonial.
“When my father died, he left an enormous collection,” said his daughter Ann, who decided to donate it to a museum. “I know that’s what he’d like.”
The naming of the galleries seems appropriate, given the family relationship between the Rivera’s and Rockefeller’s as friends and art collaborators dating back decades. But it wasn’t always smooth. In 1932, Nelson hired Diego to paint a mural inside Rockefeller Center in New York City. The family wanted something that would represent modern progress and hope for the future.
Amid various depictions, Rivera found some space to add his commentary on class. On the left side of the mural, society women were painted smoking and playing cards. On the right, Russian communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin was depicted holding hands with a group of workers.
The mural was described by The New York Telegram as “anti-capitalist propaganda,” and the bad publicity upset the Rockefellers, so they asked Rivera to remove the image of Lenin. He refused, offering instead to add an image of a prominent American leader, such as Abraham Lincoln, to the mural.
Unable to reach an agreement, Rivera was still paid the $21,000 originally promised, but the work was never finished, and was eventually destroyed. But, Rivera took photographs, and used his payment to recreate the mural in Mexico City’s Palace of Fine Arts.
However, there was one notable change. He added an image of Nelson Rockefeller’s father, John Rockefeller, who had been the major force behind the destruction of the mural. In the new version, the elder Rockefeller is seen drinking in a nightclub with a woman, with a petri dish of syphilis bacteria floating above their heads. The controversy gained worldwide attention, and has been depicted in poems, songs and films.
John Rockefeller was never a big fan of Rivera’s work to begin with, but Nelson eventually continued the friendship, even taking his family to view the mural during a trip to Mexico City.
“We went to stay in the hotel where Diego recreated part of that mural,” said Roberts. “I remember him (Nelson) talking to us about it, and the wonderful thing was that the two of them found a way to renew their friendship.”
“And I am a participant of that friendship,” said Rivera Marin. “Because now I’m friends—very good friends—with Ann.”
Rivera Marin is likewise elated that her father’s name will be preserved in a city that he loved so much. “I’m thrilled to finally … have the Mexican Museum where it should be: in the center of the city,” said Rivera Marin. “Where it can be seen by Mexicans who live there, and all the foreigners, and the entire world.”
The Mexican museum has more than 15,000 artifacts, approximately 800 of them coming from the Rockefeller donation, which will be on display at the new location at 706 Mission St. It was the last available space in the Yerba Buena Cultural Art Center.
The remodeled space will have four floors, spanning approximately 52,000 square feet, about 10 times the size of the current location at Fort Mason. In addition to increasing the museum’s physical capacity, the educational programs will also be expanded with some support from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).
The entire project will cost about $60 million, with funding from private donors and corporate sponsors. The endowment funds to keep the museum running will come through the remaining 11 galleries, listed at $3 million a piece for naming rights.
The first thousand people to sign up through the Builder’s Society can have their family’s name listed on one of the walls of the new museum for $1 a day, or $365 for one year.
To make a contribution through the Builders’s Society, or to learn more about the museum programs, contact The Mexican Museum at (415) 202-9700 or info@mexicanmuseum.org