The San Francisco Arts Commission board of directors has voted to dismantle a controversial concrete fountain by Armand Vaillancourt at Embarcadero Plaza.
On Monday, November 3, the board voted eight to five to remove the brutalist Vaillancourt Fountain to make way for the plaza’s redevelopment.
The recreation and parks department reportedly plans to spend about $4.4 million to hire a disassembly consultant to take apart the fountain and store the pieces for three years. The department has said that the fountain had previously fallen into disrepair and was a considered a safety hazard—two arguments that have been met with skepticism from critics.
On Sunday, November 2, the nonprofit Cultural Landscape Foundation, which has been fighting to preserve the monument, disputed the alledged immediate safety risk.
“For years, the [Arts] Commission deliberately decided not to properly maintain the artwork and now they’ve voted to pardon and absolve themselves, and by extension the Recreation and Parks Department, for their poor stewardship decisions,” Cultural Landscape Foundation president Charles Birnbaum said in a statement.
Tamara xd, the spokesperson for San Francisco’s recreation and parks department, told the San Francisco Standard: “People are regularly breaching the fence, cutting through the mesh, and climbing into and inside of the 10-ton corroded arms to commit vandalism, and even to sleep inside the fountain’s structure, which independent engineers and [the Department of Building Inspection] have confirmed are at risk of collapse.”
Aparton added that “combined with asbestos and lead hazards, it’s harder to imagine a clearer public safety issue.”
The removal of the fountain and redevelopment of the plaza have been an ongoing source of controversy, with The Art Newspaper previously reporting that city officials had allegedly discussed redeveloping the plaza roughly a decade before these plans were made public in 2024. The plans did not seem to include the plaza or public art asset, which the city has a legal responsibility to maintain. City officials have said, however, that this is simply not true.
