Miranda Bergman is an American contemporary muralist born in 1947 and grew up in the San Francisco Mission District where she attended Balboa High School. Bergman is known for of the seven women artists who in 1994 created the ''

MaestraPeace The Women's Building is a women-led non-profit arts and education community center located in San Francisco, California. The center advocates self-determination, gender equality and social justice. The four-story building rents to multiple tenant ...

'' mural, the largest mural in San Francisco, which covers The Women's Building. Most of the murals created/co-created by Bergman straddles artistry and social activism, giving her a space to express both social struggles and cultural celebrations. She now lives in Oakland.

Early life

Bergman's parents, Leibel and Anne Bergman, were left-wing activists.

Work

In the 1970s, she joined other artists such as

Jane Norling Jane Norling is a visual artist active in San Francisco Bay Area cultural venues since 1970. Her work addresses social & environmental justice and aesthetic concerns through public art, graphic design, painting, printmaking & small press publishing ...

and Peggy Tucker in the

Haight-Ashbury Haight-Ashbury () is a district of San Francisco, California, named for the intersection of Haight and Ashbury streets. It is also called the Haight and the Upper Haight. The neighborhood is known as one of the main centers of the countercultu ...

Muralists; this was a group formed during protests against the

Vietnam War The Vietnam War (1 November 1955 – 30 April 1975) was an armed conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia fought between North Vietnam (Democratic Republic of Vietnam) and South Vietnam (Republic of Vietnam) and their allies. North Vietnam w ...

. From 1972 to 1976 Bergman created labor-themed posters with Norling for the Working Peoples' Artists collective. In 1978, She worked on a

CETA The Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA; French: ''accord économique et commercial global'', AECG; German: ''Umfassendes Wirtschafts- und Handelsabkommen'') is a free-trade agreement between Canada and the European Union and its m ...

-funded project with young women in the city's Juvenile Hall to paint murals inside their own cell doors, as part as other parts of the jail. In 1986, Bergman worked with Juana Alicia, Hector Noel Méndez, Ariella Seidenberg, and Arch Williams to create the mural ''El Amancer'' (''The Dawn'') in a park in

Managua Managua () is the capital city, capital and largest city of Nicaragua, and one of the List of largest cities in Central America, largest cities in Central America. Located on the shores of Lake Managua, the city had an estimated population of 1, ...

, Nicaragua. Bergman and Alicia completed part of the work in the middle of the night, guarded by armed teenagers and "working in spite of the threat of a U.S.-backed Contra attack." Her South Africa-themed photo collage was included in the Syracuse Cultural Workers' 1987 calendar. She worked and lived in the Palestinian city of

Ramallah Ramallah ( , ; ) is a Palestinians, Palestinian city in the central West Bank, that serves as the administrative capital of the State of Palestine. It is situated on the Judaean Mountains, north of Jerusalem, at an average elevation of abov ...

for nine weeks in 1989 with three other Jewish-American women artists and teachers as part of the Break the Silence mural project. The mural they created together is in the Popular Arts Center in Ramallah, Palestine. Bergman's poster ''Tribute to Palestinian Women'' was included in the 1989-1990 traveling exhibition ''In Celebration of the State of Palestine'' and is now part of the digital collection of The Palestine Poster Project Archives. In 1984 she co-created "The Culture Contains the Seed of Resistance That Blossoms into the Flower of Liberation" with O’Brien Thiele, the last intact mural among the famed PLACA murals of

Balmy Alley Balmy Alley (formally Balmy Street) is a one-block-long alley that is home to the most concentrated collection of murals in the city of San Francisco. It is located in the south central portion of the Inner Mission District in Calle 24 between ...

in San Francisco. This mural depicts a naturally beautiful landscape contrasted against women holding photographs of ''

desaparecidos An enforced disappearance (or forced disappearance) is the secret abduction or imprisonment of a person with the support or acquiescence of a State (polity), state followed by a refusal to acknowledge the person's fate or whereabouts with the i ...

''. Aside from that, Bergman has worked on other murals during her time with the PLACA in the

San Francisco Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a List of regions of California, region of California surrounding and including San Francisco Bay, and anchored by the cities of Oakland, San Francisco, and San Jose, California, S ...

. In the 1990s, Bergman was also a consulting editor of '' Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies''. Bergman participated in the May, 2017 San Francisco SOMArts Cultural Center's exhibition, "Shifting Movements: Art Inspired by the Life and Activism of

Yuri Kochiyama was an American civil rights activist born in San Pedro, California. She was interned at the Jerome War Relocation Center in Arkansas during World War II, an experience that influenced her later views on racism in the United States. While in ...

(1921-2014)."

Publications

* ''Community Murals An International Visual Arts Magazine'', Volume 12, No. 1 (Spring 1987) * ''Maestrapeace Art Works'' (2000)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bergman, Miranda Living people American artist groups and collectives Artists from California Mission District, San Francisco Art in the San Francisco Bay Area 1947 births