Ralph Fasanella

Welcome Home, Boys

When Laura Ruberto made a recent trip to look at a painting, "Welcome Home, Boys", that was supposed to be hanging inside the main branch of the Oakland Public Library, she already had an inkling it wouldn’t be there. Her quarry, a 1953 painting of workers participating in a post-WWII strike, was painted by an Italian-American self-taught artist and union organizer Ralph Fasanella. Ruberto is the co-chair of Berkeley City College’s Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, and a colleague, Paul D’Ambrosio, a New York-based Fasanella scholar asked her if she would go check on it.

The $53,000 painting had been acquired by the city in 1990, and paid for with funds provided by the Union Local 790 and the City of Oakland’s Public Art Fund. It was intended to hang in the Oakland Airport, but never did, eventually finding a home at the library in 1993.

Being an Italian-American studies and art scholar who was familiar with the library, Ruberto thought it was a bad sign that she’d never heard of the painting. And when she arrived at the library on February 22, she found that its supposed location was, in fact, a blank wall.

She subsequently undertook a dogged scholarly search, conferring with a series of employees at the Oakland library, one of which eventually produced a memo that revealed some details about the painting’s travels around the city, including a stop in the Oakland Museum of California for restoration in 2003. She called the museum. She called the Oakland Public Arts Program. She left a message for the Oakland Airport. No one could tell her where it was. When she set out on her quest, Ruberto was trying not to be an alarmist.

But it was rapidly becoming apparent to her that a six-foot wide colorful painting steeped in American history might be missing.

When Ruberto reached the the Oakland Public Arts Program, Cultural Arts Manager Steven Huss says they consulted their records and confirmed that the painting was supposed to be in the library, but that the last record they had of it being there dated from 2003. The thing is, the Oakland Public Arts Program isn’t in the business of acquiring and hanging paintings. They’re in the business of commissioning new works, and most of them are really, really big. Aside from the site-specific installation pieces, Huss surmised that there were “maybe a dozen” smaller, more mobile pieces under his purview, but that he didn’t have his records in front of him and couldn’t be sure.

For the library’s part, they had kept a record of the painting’s travels up to its trip to the museum. Interestingly, Ruberto describes in a long blog post detailing her search, that when the employee at the history desk of the Oakland Main Library brought her the Fasanella file, she declined to bring her a second, saying that “...the other memos pointed to some nasty, local politics, and it was best for those names not to get out.” The Bay Citizen has inquired with the library about the mysterious second memo, but they have not been able to confirm its existence or produce it at this time.

On March 2nd, nine days after Ruberto began her search, she was informed by the City of Oakland that the painting had never been lost. It had been hanging in the African American Museum and Library at Oakland, where it was sent post restoration because of the building’s superior climate.

Carmen Martinez, Director of Library Services, takes responsibility for the poor documentation. “We did a bad job,” she said.

D’Ambrosio, the Fasanella scholar and chief curator at the Fenimore Museum in Cooperstown, N.Y., was perterbed by the confusion about the painting’s locale.

“It never occurred to me that this could happen. These aren’t inexpensive works. They’re purchased with a fair amount of public money, and sold with a certain amount of fanfare,” he said, “It’s not the sort of thing you misplace...In a museum, you don’t move a painting down the hall without paperwork.”

The Case of the Missing Fasanella has a happy ending, but it does raise questions as to how well art purchased with public funds is cataloged and tracked. Over the past 11 years, according to Huss, the Oakland Public Arts program has been whittled down from 22 employees to just three. He also said that the last full survey of their collection was in 2005 —although “Welcome Home, Boys” seems to have been overlooked. In a climate of shrinking public arts funding, one wonders if historic pieces aren’t where they’re supposed to be.