A 90-year mystery solved: ‘Lost’ Maxine Albro frescoes uncovered at the Ebell of Los Angeles
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The frescoes were too loud in color, critics said. Too modern. Too thin and flat. The frescoes, the club members complained, were “out of harmony” and ruining their enjoyment of their garden — and so, they decreed, the frescoes had to go.
It was 1933 at the Ebell of Los Angeles, a prominent women’s club founded in 1894 that had for six years occupied a majestic new building off Wilshire Boulevard, built in the Italian Renaissance style by famed architect Sumner P. Hunt. The club’s then-president, Anna May Dunlap, commissioned muralist and painter Maxine Albro to create frescoes for the north loggia of the Ebell’s garden — for which Albro toiled away during the heat of July and August that year.
Called “The Four Sibyls,” the frescoes depict the female seers of ancient Greek and Roman mythology, including the Roman, Cumaean, Erythraean and Delphic sibyls. Albro had studied under a student of Diego Rivera’s and would go on to become one of the country’s foremost female muralists, working with the Works Progress Administration on projects including murals at San Francisco’s Coit Tower.
Albro’s Ebell frescoes were indeed bright and modern — having been created in the style recently popularized by Rivera — and, like many great works of art throughout the ages, her creations sparked a pitched battle.
In what would go down in history as the “Sibyl War,” Ebell members argued for two years about the appropriateness of the frescoes, touching on still-universal themes including who art is for, why art matters, what art’s place is in society, and how progress can be made if risks are never taken.
“It is an amazing thing that we can become so interested in art discussion that our ‘sibyl war’ has widened art appreciation,” Dunlap wrote in 1934 before stepping down as president because of the controversy. “No longer are we confined to ‘kitchen, children and church,’ and we must see to it that these avenues are kept forever open for American women.”
The Sibyl War ended in March 1935, with a vote of 385 to 223 in favor of the frescoes’ removal. The Times’ then-art critic, Arthur Millier, was a staunch advocate for the murals and wrote about them many times, including a particularly poignant plea for them to be spared a week before they were slated for destruction.
“There is in Los Angeles, in a semi-public place, a work of art which gives to a vast gray wall a freshness like the breath of spring, a lightsome beauty like the dawn of the Renaissance in Tuscany,” Millier wrote. “This work of art, in fact, is one of the signs of our own California Renaissance — a thing of sure-footed youthfulness, and of bright happy color.”
“Every great work of art was once new and strange,” Millier noted. “Time alone — plenty of time — can make its message clear to all.”
What happened to the frescoes remained a mystery for 90 years, said Meredith Drake Reitan, the Ebell’s first scholar in residence, who came across the history of the lost murals after gaining access to the Ebell’s vast archives. No record could be found documenting the method used to remove them, but historical letters and news clippings referred to techniques that would have resulted in destruction, including dousing them with lye, chipping them off the wall and sandblasting them.
Ebell Executive Director Stacy Brightman, after hearing chatter about the lost Albros upon taking her post, decided to find out. Brightman hired Kiernan Graves, a wall-painting conservator who specializes in murals and frescoes, to see what she could find beneath what turned out to be more than nine layers of paint. Graves began the work of revealing a 6-inch window of wall into art history.
That was in January, just a few days after fires devastated large swaths of Pacific Palisades and Altadena. Graves remembered driving through the smoky haze to the beautiful Ebell garden.
“It was a really grim time,” Graves says. “So to see the color appear, it was just such a bright light in that moment — to feel like something is surviving rather than destroyed.”
Later that night, Brightman called Graves to check in, breathless with anticipation.
“Oh, girl, you got frescoes,” Graves told her.
The women laugh as they tell the story. They sit at a polished wooden table in the Ebell’s lovingly preserved wood-paneled library. Visiting schoolchildren can be heard laughing during a presentation in a nearby auditorium where Amelia Earhart gave her last public appearance before disappearing over the Pacific Ocean. The ornate, stately building echoes with women’s history, even as its current leaders infuse it with future purpose.
The newly discovered “lost” Albros are cause for great celebration at the center. The women who wanted to save the Albros, it turns out, not only had photographed the frescoes for posterity before they were covered but also had managed to ensure they were simply painted over, knowing full well that their time would come around to be revealed again.
When looking through the archives, Reitan found evidence of the women’s resolve. “They say things like, ‘We may not understand what we’re doing now, but women in the future will understand.’ They’re absolutely confident of that,” she says. “And so the idea that they actually are here, and they lasted into the future, and that we now have the capacity to really uncover them in the appropriate way, it’s just absolutely incredible.”
Because the frescoes were covered up so quickly, they never got the chance to cure as frescoes normally do, Graves says. This rendered them in pristine condition but also made them quite fragile, which is why after uncovering several 6-inch spots and confirming that the frescoes were intact, Graves immediately covered up the art again.
In yet another twist for the prized works, it is unclear when they can — and if they should — be fully uncovered and restored, Brightman says. The nonprofit Ebell, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, must undergo a city-mandated seismic retrofit. The incredibly costly process will likely last many years and involve far too much dust and construction chaos for the frescoes’ safety.
“This campus is a jewel for Los Angeles. We have to save it and make it sing for the next century,” Brightman says, adding that the timing is good. “Ninety years of a mystery has been solved. The sibyls can keep sleeping safely, and we can have a really thoughtful conversation about what that means, and what the Ebell needs to look like, and be, as we come out the other side.”
The discovery of the murals will be discussed at the Ebell Institute’s annual women’s history in L.A. symposium, Thursday, March 27 at 9 a.m. The event is free and an RSVP is encouraged.
