ARG Conservation Services, Inc.

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Scope Of Work

The “Brotherhood of Man” by Anthony Stellon, was a gift from May Joseph Alioto to the City of San Francisco and was originally installed at the Martin Luther King Jr. swimming pool in the Bayview Hunters Point District. The mosaic was removed during pool renovations in 1996. The entire was assembly, with the mosaic still attached, was moved to storage in a Recreations Park Department (RPD) exterior maintenance yard. 

In 2011, ARG Conservation Services (ARG/CS) was retained by the San Francisco Arts Commission to provide design-build contracting services for a new support and backing system that would allow “Brotherhood of Man” to be installed on an existing retaining wall in Franklin Square. In addition to engineering and installing the new support, ARG/CS protected the mosaic during the replacement of the backing system and the transportation of the artwork from the RPD maintenance yard to Franklin Square. 

The project’s design phase concluded in January of 2014. Beginning in September of 2012, the treatment phase involved the following stages: pre-conservation of the mural in the maintenance yard site; moving the artwork and staging it for repairs; installation of the artwork’s new backing system and steel frame; and mosaic conservation. Final conservation treatments included cleaning and resetting tesserae, re-grouting, and installing a sacrificial anti-graffiti coating.