{"id":45275,"date":"2026-08-14T22:17:04","date_gmt":"2026-08-14T17:17:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=45275"},"modified":"2026-08-14T22:17:04","modified_gmt":"2026-08-14T17:17:04","slug":"a-150-pound-statue-was-found-buried-in-a-san-francisco-backyard-its-origin-is-a-mystery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=45275","title":{"rendered":"A 150-pound statue was found buried in a San Francisco backyard. Its origin is a mystery"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script>\r\n  atOptions = {\r\n    'key' : '644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6',\r\n    'format' : 'iframe',\r\n    'height' : 90,\r\n    'width' : 728,\r\n    'params' : {}\r\n  };\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"https:\/\/www.highperformanceformat.com\/644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div data-element=\"story-body\" data-subscriber-content=\"\">\n<p>One day in late May, Greg Gatwood was doing what he does best as a design landscaper \u2014 grading his backyard and leveling the soil. Gatwood hoped to put in a new fence and was raking some rocks and dirt to make the yard smoother.<\/p>\n<p>As the 65-year-old was using a pickax to remove what he thought was a rectangular piece of concrete, the object moved.<\/p>\n<p>Puzzled, Gatwood lifted the big block and flipped it over to reveal it was a very large bust of a woman, weighing about 150 pounds.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve always thought every yard deserves a nice piece of garden art,\u201d Gatwood told The Times. \u201cThis will be displayed in a special way in our yard. I hope to share the photos of our yard when it\u2019s completed with the statue beautifully placed.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>His wife, Judy Gittelsohn, 68, was sitting inside their San Francisco home in Russian Hill working when she noticed her husband\u2019s discovery.<\/p>\n<p>Gittelsohn, a painter who attended the now-shuttered San Francisco Art Institute in the 1970s, located across the street from the couple\u2019s home, reached out to about 50 scholars and art experts about the origins of the bust.<\/p>\n<p>She learned that the bust likely could have belonged to one of the students of <a class=\"link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cfa.gov\/about-cfa\/who-we-are\/ralph-stackpole\" target=\"_blank\">Ralph Stackpole<\/a>, a sculptor who taught at the San Francisco Art Institute (then known as the California School of Fine Arts.) Stackpole joined the faculty in 1918 and taught there until 1941.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe thrilling part is the investigation and how many people are so excited about this,\u201d Gittelsohn said. \u201cYou find a treasure and it\u2019s just like the world is sort of opening in this way. We knew Ralph Stackpole\u2019s canon of work but we didn\u2019t know how many people he taught and how many people\u2019s lives he\u2019s touched. I\u2019m a painter and it\u2019s a fantastic big book opening.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The bust is about 22 inches wide, 18 inches high and 10 inches deep, according to the couple. They also did an assessment and concluded the statue is most likely limestone.<\/p>\n<p>The statue could be from the Golden Gate International Exposition, which was a World\u2019s Fair held at Treasure Island in 1939, according to the couple.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe likelihood is that it was made in the 1930s because of the style of execution,\u201d Gittelsohn said. \u201cIt\u2019s pretty typical of the 1939 exhibition on Treasure Island. Ralph Stackpole had a studio and home down the street and he brought in painter Diego Rivera and they created these styles of sculptures.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The couple isn\u2019t planning on getting the bust appraised due to the high cost of the service. They also aren\u2019t planning on selling the statue. In the meantime, Gatwood is continuing his yardwork \u2014 now around the statue.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGreg has worked in many yards and a couple of our own and this has been the biggest find,\u201d Gittelsohn said. \u201cPeople are fascinated. It\u2019s a real sweet gift.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Anne Schnoebelen, a historian and vice president of the board of directors for the Treasure Island Museum in San Francisco, said that there isn\u2019t any evidence yet linking the statue to a specific artist or time period. <\/p>\n<p>But she said if she had to guess, she would say the bust is from an area of the 1939 World\u2019s Fair on Treasure Island called \u201cThe Court of Pacifica,\u201d which featured an 80-foot statue of the goddess \u201cPacifica\u201d by Stackpole. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Court of Pacifica\u201d also included a fountain of 20 other sculptures representing the Pacifica community. <\/p>\n<p>Schnoebelen said that the sculpture could\u2019ve been created by Adaline Kent, Helen Phillips or Sargent Claude Johnson, whose sculptures were displayed at the World\u2019s Fair. <\/p>\n<p>An expert could analyze the individual brushstrokes on the statue to identify the exact origins of the bust, she said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere\u2019s a sophisticated method to examine the strokes to examine how it was made and what kind of tools were used,\u201d she added. \u201cI just think that when sculptures are known for doing that kind of work, experts can determine who did what.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>Schnoebelen said that while the speculating on the origins of the statue is all conjecture at this point, she does enjoy the attention the statue has brought to this particular period of art. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cI love that it\u2019s bringing attention to something that I care about very deeply,\u201d she said. \u201cI appreciate that Judy and Greg have added that to the mix of possibility. It looks like it could\u2019ve been one of the faces made for the \u2018Court of Pacifica\u2019 but we don\u2019t know.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>The San Francisco Art Institute closed in 2022 and was purchased by a nonprofit in 2024, with the intention of turning it into the California Academy of Studio Arts, which will offer 30 visual artists a free one-year residency.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<script async=\"async\" data-cfasync=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/pl30214220.effectivecpmnetwork.com\/9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<div id=\"container-9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\"><\/div>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One day in late May, Greg Gatwood was doing what he does best as a design landscaper \u2014 grading his backyard and leveling the soil. Gatwood hoped to put in a new fence and was raking some rocks and dirt to make the yard smoother. As the 65-year-old was using a pickax to remove what&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45276,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/ca-times.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/92f6259\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/2593x1361+0+184\/resize\/1200x630!\/quality\/75\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F25%2F61%2Ffe22433a49f79507d46865ed06ad%2Fla-me-this-couple-found-statue-buried-in-their-backyard-in-san-francisco-now-theyre-trying-to-find-its-origin-23.jpeg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-hub"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45275\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/45276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}