SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 30 (San Francisco News Online) — A 150-pound limestone bust found beneath a backyard in San Francisco’s Russian Hill neighborhood has opened a small mystery in the city’s art history: Who made it, and why was it buried?
Greg Gatwood and Judy Gittelsohn discovered the sculpture while working in their yard in May 2026. The object shows the head and neck of a woman rising from a rectangular base. The couple estimates that it is about 22 inches wide, 18 inches high and 10 inches deep.
Gatwood told news organizations that he first thought his shovel had struck concrete or the footing of a fence post. He used a pickaxe to free the object from the ground.
The sculpture’s maker, date and burial history have not been established.
Why the sculpture matters to San Francisco
The find has attracted attention because of the property’s location and its connection to a former art school nearby.
The couple’s house was reportedly built in 1948 on what had previously been an undeveloped lot. Across the street was a building that housed the sculpture department of the California School of Fine Arts, the institution later known as the San Francisco Art Institute.
Ralph Stackpole, an important San Francisco sculptor, taught at the school from 1918 to 1941, according to the Los Angeles Times. That history led Gittelsohn to consider whether the bust could have been made by one of Stackpole’s students.
Gittelsohn, a professional artist, has also suggested that the work may date to the 1930s. She told the Los Angeles Times that the style of its execution pointed to that period and said the sculpture appeared to have been made by someone with advanced skill rather than by a hobbyist.
Those ideas remain theories. No evidence has tied the bust to Stackpole, one of his students or the Works Progress Administration, a federal program that supported artists during the Great Depression.
Could it be linked to the 1939 world’s fair?
Historian Anne Schnoebelen, vice president of the Treasure Island Museum board, said the sculpture might possibly relate to the Court of Pacifica at the Golden Gate International Exposition, held on Treasure Island in 1939 and 1940.
Schnoebelen identified Adaline Kent, Helen Phillips and Sargent Claude Johnson as artists who could be considered in researching the work. She also cautioned that there is no evidence yet connecting the bust to a particular artist or period.
The Court of Pacifica is one possible line of inquiry, not an established provenance. Provenance is the documented history of an artwork’s ownership, location and creation. In this case, the available information does not show who owned the bust, when it was made or who placed it underground.
What investigators have found so far
Gittelsohn said she has contacted about 50 scholars, historians, curators and other art experts.
“Nobody knows anything about it,” she told Smithsonian magazine.
The lack of a signature, catalog record or other identifying document has made the search difficult. The available accounts do not include a conservation report, appraisal, formal analysis of the stone or records from the former art school that identify the piece.
The reports also do not establish whether the sculpture was deliberately buried, discarded during construction or placed underground for another reason. Its precise age is unknown as well.
For now, the bust is best understood as an unidentified work that sits at the intersection of a private discovery and San Francisco’s public art history. Its appearance and location provide clues, but they do not amount to an attribution.
The couple has discussed displaying the sculpture at the American Messenger Gallery in September and building a pedestal for it in their garden. The exact display plans and date have not been independently confirmed. If the work is shown publicly, it could give San Francisco’s arts community another opportunity to examine the object and help resolve a mystery that began with a shovel striking stone.
