The Bay Meadows painting
A painting on masonite, saved from a racetrack that no longer exists, put back on public view without a single fixing touching the work.
A large vintage painting of the break from the gate, painted on masonite and taken down from Bay Meadows racetrack before the site was cleared. The San Mateo County History Museum acquired it for the county's collection and asked us to handle the piece, find a way to mount it, and get it safely onto a wall in a public building.
The museum occupies the old county courthouse, and the wall chosen for it sits in the rotunda under the stained-glass dome, in full view of the balcony and the stair. A piece hung there is seen from three levels at once and lives among marble, brass and Corinthian capitals. It had to look as though the building had always held it.
Masonite is the whole problem. It is a panel, not a canvas on a stretcher: nothing can be screwed through it, nothing can be glued or fastened to the back, and the board carries its own weight across its full width. Anything conventional would have been an intervention on the object itself, which is not something you do to a piece a county has just decided to keep.
How it went up
Racetrack to rotunda
Holding the piece without touching it. With nothing permitted through the masonite or onto its back, the mount had to come from the wall and carry the panel rather than grip it. We had brass brackets made for the piece, sized to the board and finished to sit quietly against the wall rather than announce themselves.
The brackets are anchored into the concrete behind the plaster, which is the structure in that wall that will take the load. The painting rests in them, held from outside rather than fastened from behind, and it can come down again without a mark on the work.
