Collection context
Summary
- Creators:
- Packard, Emmy Lou, 1914-1998
- Extent:
- 20 linear feet (12 cartons, 9 boxes, 3 oversize boxes)
- Language:
- English .
- Preferred citation:
-
Emmy Lou Packard papers, BANC MSS 88/207 c, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
Background
- Scope and content:
-
The Emmy Lou Packard papers consist of correspondence, gallery records, newsclippings, articles, photographs, notes and notebooks, legal papers, medical files, and other materials relating to her art, activism, and diabetes care. The bulk of the collection primarily documents Packard's later life (from the 1960s on) and is particularly focused on her research of her largely unwritten book on Diego Rivera's San Francisco murals.
The series CORRESPONDENCE is divided into three sub-series, Family, Outgoing, and General. Family correspondence is slight with the bulk being from her son, Donald, and his wife. Outgoing focuses primarily on Packard's correspondence with others regarding her unfinished book Diego Rivera: The San Francisco Frescos. General correspondence covers incoming, again centered primarily around her unfinished book on Diego Rivera.
The series ART FILES encompasses gallery correspondence, inventories, price lists, sales receipts, income and expenses, biographical materials, gallery announcements, catalogs, news clippings, a small number of files regarding art exhibitions, public art commission files, and reproduction of artworks.
The SOCIAL ACTIVISM series centers around Packard's environmental preservation efforts in Mendocino, California, working with the United Farm Workers, and her mural advocacy and preservation efforts. There are also files associated with her trip to the USSR and Indonesia in the 1960s regarding a peace conference. The series concludes with a range of subject files on social and political causes that were of great interest to her.
The series DIEGO RIVERA: THE SAN FRANCISCO FRESCOS features a small amount of writing she completed for the book; however, the bulk of the series consists of subject files. The subject files are an amalgam of notes, clippings, photos, and other materials in support of the book Packard was working on. The dates on the folders reflect the content she created (notes) or published materials, e.g. pamphlets or newspaper clippings, but not the date range of associated photocopied news clippings.
PERSONAL PAPERS cover interviews, legal files, biographical notes, passports, memorial and obituary materials, letters of condolence, address books, an invitation to the 52 Presidental Inauguration, and subject files on Mendocino, Calif. and Prague, photographs of and taken by a Russian Lunar Lander, and two periodicals on Uzbekistan culture.
The brief series FAMILY PAPERS is comprised primarily of biographical/genealogical materials on relatives, and her first husband Burton Cairns' High School yearbook and obituary.
DIABETES AND MEDICAL FILES contain correspondence with doctors and a fellow diabetes sufferer Jim Scamardo. Also included are a medical history, vaccination records, and miscellaneous medically related files.
The series NOTEBOOKS contains numerous notebooks in support of her unfinished book Diego Rivera: The San Francisco Frescos, several notebooks and the topics of art, politics and philosophy, calendars, a single notebook on the Pomo Indians, and a notebook on Russian phrases. The bulk of the series is devoted to General notebooks which are a defacto diary containing notes from phone calls, to-do lists, and other daily occurrences.
The final series AUDIO CASSETTE TAPES features a large amount of audio recordings of interviews in support of Packard's unfinished book Diego Rivera: The San Francisco Frescos. The rest of the audio tapes cover a variety of subjects, from Cesar Chavez and the UAW, presidential speeches, phone messages, Packard's interview with Paul Karlstrom of the Archives of American Art, and programs on political and international affairs.
- Biographical / historical:
-
Artist, activist, and diabetes advocate, Emmy Lou Packard was born on April 15, 1914, near El Centro, California to Emma and Walter Packard, the internationally known agronomist. In 1927, the Packard family traveled to Mexico for Walter's consulting job with the Mexican government working on agrarian and land settlement reform issues. During the Packard family's stay, Emmy Lou was introduced to famed Mexican muralist Diego Rivera by her mother Emma while Rivera was completing a large mural at the Secretariat of Public Education building in Mexico City. Emmy then 13 years old had already begun painting and drawing. Emma proudly showed samples of her daughter's work to Rivera. Being impressed with Emmy's artworks, Rivera mentored her for the next year which marked the beginning of a long friendship and mentorship.
Upon returning to the States, Emmy entered the University of California, Berkeley in 1932. During her studies, she became the first woman editor of the campus humor magazine, The Pelican, and was also art editor of the campus newspaper The Daily Californian, and the campus literary magazine, The Occident. In 1934, she eloped to Nevada with the architect Burton Cairns, a recent graduate of Cal. Together they had a son, Donald Cairns. In 1936 Packard graduated from Berkeley with her bachelor's degree and shortly thereafter studied sculpture and fresco painting at the San Francisco Art Institute. Burton died in a car accident in 1939. In 1940 Diego Rivera was commissioned to create the mural, Pan American Unity for the Golden Gate International Exposition (GGIE) in San Francisco. He asked Emmy to be his chief assistant for painting. This mural was later transferred to the City College of San Francisco. Upon the mural's completion, Emmy traveled back to Mexico to live with Rivera and Frida Kahlo, working as their studio assistant, and while there captured their relationship in some of the most well-known photographs of the artists. In 1941 Emmy held her first one-person exhibition of oils, watercolors, and drawings of Mexican themes at the Stendahl Gallery in Los Angeles. During WWII Emmy did layout and exhibits for war relief organizations in addition to being employed for a year at the Kaiser-Richmond Shipyards working as a draftsperson, designing transport vessels, and illustrating the shipyard worker newsletter Fore 'n' Aft. Her illustrations for the publication promoted racial desegregation, women's participation, and safety and dignity in the workplace. From 1950-1951, Emmy was co-chairman and organizer for the artists' union Artists Equity in San Francisco. In 1959 Emmy Lou married artist Byron T. Randall and they left the Bay Area to move to Mendocino, California. Emmy's time there was a small part of her long career as an artist but left an indelible mark on the community. She and Byron bought a house overlooking the Pacific, turning it into their home, art studios, guest house, and gallery. Emmy's strong interest in Mendocino's natural beauty galvanized her to oppose development plans that would have spoiled the area's coastal bluffs. Her organizing efforts were successful and led to the creation of the Mendocino Headlands State Park in 1974. A commemoration plaque honoring her preservation efforts was dedicated in 1987.
The mid-60s was an especially artistic fertile time for Emmy as she completed numerous public and private mural commissions in materials ranging from mosaic to concrete bas-relief. Most notable was her commission for the central façade of the Cesar Chavez Student Center at the University of California, Berkeley in Lower Sproul Plaza. Its design is an 85-foot long, 5-foot high, concrete bas-relief terrace parapet adorned with a Modernist mural depicting California landscape features of coastal bluffs, cultivated fields, mountains, and rivers. Other notable commissions included a mural painting for the Fresno Convention Center Theater, a mosaic for Hillcrest Elementary School, San Francisco, and a glazed brick mural for a public library in Pinole, California. During her long career, she also illustrated textbooks for San Francisco public schools, led the effort to save the Rincon Annex Post Office that housed the mural by Anton Refregier from Richard Nixon's chopping block, and with the help of Dorothy Wagner Puccinelli restored the WPA murals at Coit Tower. Following her divorce from Byron in 1972, Emmy returned to San Francisco in 1973 settling in the Mission District. Word soon got around the neighborhood about a woman who had worked under Rivera. Packard's last major artistic contribution became the support and mentorship of a generation of Mission artists who would go on to found the community mural movement. She served as a mural technical adviser for Homage to Siqueiros, the Bank of America building mural project, and the murals found on the Women's Building and Balmy Alley, among others. Emmy provided a direct link between the artistic lineage of Rivera and contemporary Mission District muralists by working closely with artists Jesús "Chuy" Campusano, Luis Cortázar, and Michael Rios. The early-mid 70s also saw Emmy working closely with Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers organization helping to design the National Farm Workers Service Center in Delano, California. She also designed the 1974 UFW calendar.
In addition to her well-known work in fresco and mosaics, Emmy also worked in watercolor, oil, laminated plastic, and printmaking, both in linocuts and woodblocks. It is the latter medium that she became strongly associated with as her prints went on to gain significant popularity in the Bay Area during the 1950s and 1960s. Social justice was the driving force throughout her oeuvre. Her art celebrates diversity, peace, and nature while tackling complex social topics, and it was through printmaking, Emmy could make her work accessible to all those who wished to acquire it.
Emmy died on February 22, 1998, in San Francisco, California, of diabetes-related causes.
- Acquisition information:
- Gift of Don Cairns, 2011-2012.
- Processing information:
-
Processed at the folder level by Dean Smith in 2024.
- Rules or conventions:
- DACS
Access and use
- Restrictions:
-
Collection is open for research.
- Terms of access:
-
Some materials in these collections may be protected by the U.S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S.C.). In addition, the reproduction of some materials may be restricted by terms of University of California gift or purchase agreements, donor restrictions, privacy and publicity rights, licensing and trademarks. Transmission or reproduction of materials protected by copyright beyond that allowed by fair use requires the written permission of the copyright owners. Works not in the public domain cannot be commercially exploited without permission of the copyright owner. Responsibility for any use rests exclusively with the user. For additional information about the University of California, Berkeley Library's permissions policy please see: http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/about/permissions-policies.
- Preferred citation:
-
Emmy Lou Packard papers, BANC MSS 88/207 c, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
- Location of this collection:
-
University of California, Berkeley, The Bancroft LibraryBerkeley, CA 94720-6000, US
- Contact:
- 510-642-6481