Mysterious Paint Can of San Francisco’s Maritime Museum

The paint can, with identifying label, associated with the Aquatic Park Bathhouse lobby murals created in the late 1930s.

NPS Photo/Anna Christie. SAFR 20298.

Article written by Nicole Martin, PhD

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In 2003, five cans were found in the basement of the Sala Burton Building (Maritime Museum). One can in particular stands out: an old, rusty cat food can with the residue of blue paint inside. A label on the side reads “Flat Blue Fish, Panel #26” in pencil. Park staff determined that the cans were used to mix and apply paint to the stunning sea-themed murals created in the late 1930s in the lobby of what was once the Aquatic Park Bathhouse. The label identifies the specific panel and subject on the mural.

The paint can is a tangible link to a past world very different from our own. The artists who painted the murals were hired as part of the Federal Art Project, the visual arts arm of the New Deal’s Works Progress Administration (WPA). As a national relief program during the Great Depression, it employed over 10,000 artists to create public art with few restrictions. While women artists participated, their work has been overshadowed by the men who directed projects. This was true of the Aquatic Park Bathhouse murals. Tracing who potentially used the blue paint for the fish reveals how women artists contributed to public art at a time when such projects were believed to be essential for maintaining the “collective spirit” of the San Francisco community.²

One of the murals of the Aquatic Park Bathhouse, with flat blue fish at top. "There is no sense of division between the sea, the buildings, the decorations — all seem as one, the perfect blend," despite being the creation of hundreds of workers (1940 WPA report).

NPS Photo/Anna Christie

Two known women possibly used the blue paint. The most likely was Ann Sonia Medalie, a Latvian immigrant and muralist known as the “queen of fish” for making the mural fish shimmer with metallic powders and transparent glazes. The other was Shirley Staschen Triest, a veteran of the Coit Tower murals and labor protests, who may have assisted in painting the lobby.³ The sense of community women like Ann and Shirley helped create through their work on the murals extended to the vibrant arts-centered, radical bohemian culture found in San Francisco during the Great Depression.

The Aquatic Bathhouse

A WPA progress report called Aquatic Park little more than a dream of San Francisco until the WPA provided the necessary “man power and money.”⁴ At the center of the park stood the Bathhouse, an imposing structure made to look like a great white ocean liner. Called “A Palace for the People” by local newspapers and the WPA, it was intended to be a public building for swimmers. The lowest level opened onto the beach and included automatic showers, drying rooms, and concessions. Other floors included banquet rooms, lounges, and outdoor terraces - all of which showcased magnificent murals and artwork.⁵

The Aquatic Park Bathhouse, called “A Palace for the People” by local press and the WPA, opened to the public in 1939.

NPS Photo/Anna Christie

Days before the opening in 1939, the federal government turned the building over to the city of San Francisco, which then leased it to a private developer.

In a perversion of its original vision as a public playground, it became the Aquatic Park Casino, a nightclub that limited public access.

The artists who worked on the building protested the commercialization by refusing to finish their work or removing it. Long after the controversy faded, the building became home to the country’s first senior center and the San Francisco Maritime Museum. In 1978, ownership transferred to the National Park Service, and in 1988, it formed the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park.

Painting Hues and Harmony

This image of the paint can captures the remnants of the blue paint used on the mesmerizing fish.

NPS Photo/Anna Christie

One of the most exciting aspects of the rediscovery of the paint cans is the residue of blue paint. The art director and designer of the lobby murals, Hilaire Hiler, was obsessed with color. He believed that color contained a psychological as well as a visual impact, and he sought to create harmonious combinations. Unlike most other San Francisco WPA murals – which are largely works of social realism highlighting everyday life during the Great Depression – Hilaire’s murals are surreal, envisioning fantastical worlds below the sea in bright, eye-catching colors. He wrote, “Undersea life is organic. There are no straight lines.”⁶

Ann Medalie, the “queen of fish,” adding color to a sea plant on one of the lobby murals.

NPS Collections, SAFR 21374

While Hilaire has historically received most of the credit for the murals, his assistant Ann Medalie was crucial to bringing them to life through her skill with metallic paints. Shirley Staschen Triest primarily worked on the third floor of the bathhouse under Richard Ayer, but she also likely painted the lobby murals and later noted how artists from different floors “intermingled fairly freely,” mixing jobs and working together to create a pleasant and compatible work environment that matched the natural harmony Hilaire sought in his color palette.⁷

Women Artists and San Francisco’s Bohemian Community

That collaborative mixing extended to the artists’ personal lives. For a time, both Ann and Shirley lived in “The Monkey Block,” an affordable refuge for artists during the Great Depression. After work, they would unwind at the Black Cat Café – “where everything was happening” – to discuss art, politics, and their work.⁸ They also mingled with fellow artists at union meetings, sharing information about WPA jobs. It was a scene open to communists, anarchists, pacifists, lesbians, and gay men among others. The openness, cooperation, and compassion of the community was something organic and beautiful, but also, as Shirley pointed out, a product of financial need.⁹

Shirley Staschen Triest (left) with fellow artist Julia Rogers protesting outside Coit Tower in 1934 during a controversy over the inclusion of communist symbols in the Coit Tower WPA murals.

SAN FRANCISCO HISTORY CENTER, SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC LIBRARY.

Before the New Deal, art was primarily a luxury commodity and artists were often isolated and unfunded. By funding artists en masse, the Federal Art Project enabled artists to not just put food on the table but also collaborate with and inspire each other. They became professionals making a significant contribution to American life.¹⁰ By funding women specifically, at a time when most funding and benefits fell to male breadwinners and reinforced women’s role in the traditional home or in lower paid domestic work, the Federal Art Project provided an opening for women to become respected wage earners on par with their male counterparts.¹¹

Ann and Shirley lived unconventional lives as WPA artists and members of San Francisco’s bohemian scene. After she finished working for the WPA, Ann traveled all over the world to different artists’ communities, enriching her art. Shirley never left California, but she also never stopped being receptive to radical political and social ideas and new art styles.¹² For women artists like them, home was the creative space where they could make blue fish come alive and shimmer. It was also a collaborative community that valued art in public spaces. While the world they inhabited did not survive economic recovery, their art remains.

Home and Homelands Exhibition

This project was made possible through the National Park Service in part by a grant from the National Park Foundation.

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¹ Accession Receiving Report, Department of the Interior, National Park Service, accession number SAFR-01825.

² Quotation from foreword to Report on Progress of the Works Program in San Francisco (San Francisco: Works Progress Administration, 1938).

³ Noemesha Williams, email to author, San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park, National Park Service, April 5, 2023.

⁴ Introduction to Report on Progress of the Works Program.

⁵ Four Years of Achievement Under the Federal Work Program of Northern California (San Francisco: Works Progress Administration, 1940). See also Sabrina Oliveros, Hilaire Hiler Podcast Series, San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park, National Park Service, October 14, 2020.

⁶ Oliveros, Hilaire Hiler Podcast Series. Quotation included in John Rogers, A Palace for the People, San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park, National Park Service, 3/13/2021.

⁷ Oral history interview with Shirley Staschen Triest, 1964 April 12-23, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

⁸ Shirley Staschen Triest, A Life on the First Waves of Radical Bohemianism in San Francisco, interviews conducted by Victoria Morris Byerly (1995 and 1996), Regional Oral History Office, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

⁹ Triest, interview.

¹⁰ Alissa Wilkinson, “Artists helped lift America out of the Great Depression. Could that happen again? As unemployment soars, the WPA’s emphasis on artists shows a path toward recovery,” Vox, June 22, 2022.

¹¹ For more on gender assumption in New Deal legislation and programs, see Linda Gordon, Pitied But Not Entitled: Single Mothers and the History of Welfare, 1890-1935 (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1995).

¹² Triest, A Life on the First Waves.