Miranda Bergman is a contemporary muralist and one of the seven women artists who in 1994 created the '' MaestraPeace'' mural, the largest mural in San Francisco, which covers

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

Work

She grew up in the San Francisco Mission District and attended Balboa High School. She now lives in Oakland. In the 1970s, she joined other artists 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 counterculture ...

Muralists. From 1972 to 1976 Bergman created labor-themed posters with Jane Nordling for the Working Peoples' Artists collective. She worked on a CETA-funded project with other artists to paint murals in the city jail. In 1986, Bergman worked with

Juana Alicia Juana Alicia (born 1953) is an American muralist, printmaker, educator, activist and, painter. She has been an educator for forty years. Juana Alicia, as part of the faculty Berkeley City College, founded and directed the True Colors Public Art ...

, Hector Noel Méndez, Ariella Seidenberg, and Arch Williams to create the mural ''El Amancer'' (''The Dawn'') in a park in

Managua ) , settlement_type = Capital city , motto = , image_map = , mapsize = , map_caption = , pushpin_map = Nicara ...

, 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 ( , ; ar, رام الله, , God's Height) is a Palestinian city in the central West Bank that serves as the ''de facto'' administrative capital of the State of Palestine. It is situated on the Judaean Mountains, north of Jerusale ...

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 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 by a State (polity), state or political organization, or by a third party with the authorization, support, or acquiescence of a state or po ...

''. Bergman has also worked on other murals in the

San Francisco Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Go ...

. 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. Influenced by her Japanese-American family's experience in an American internment camp, her association with Malcolm X, and her Maoist beliefs, she advocated for many causes, including black separatism, t ...

(1921-2014)."

Publications

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

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bergman, Miranda 1940s births Living people American artist groups and collectives Artists from California Mission District, San Francisco Art in the San Francisco Bay Area