California Historical Society Exhibit:  A Wild Flight of the Imagination: the Story of the Golden Gate Bridge, featuring art, photographs, films and historic bridge artifacts.

Tuesday – Sundays from February 28 through October 14, 2012, 12:00 - 5:00 p.m. each day. 

Closed Mondays.

It was Joseph Strauss, Chief Engineer of the bridge, and Michael M. O’Shaughnessy, San Francisco’s iconic City Engineer who coined the soaring phrase which inspires the California Historical Society exhibition title and carried the seemingly impossible job to its completion.

The exhibition, which honors the 75th anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge, includes a look back at the Golden Gate itself – one hundred years before the building of the bridge – as well as the building and historic opening of the bridge in 1937. It will also examine the bridge’s influence as an inspirational landscape for artists, writers, tourists, and people worldwide.

Learn what life was like for travelers before the spanning of the Gate – when ferry travel could still accommodate traffic between San Francisco and Marin County. Follow the media campaign and efforts of San Francisco Mayor James Rolph to win over a reluctant public, and the victorious telegram informing Rolph of the bridge’s approval by the federal government.

See works of art and photography by Maynard Dixon, Chesley Bonestell, Carleton Watkins and Dorothea Lange, along with spectacular architectural drawings by John Eberson and Irving Morrow from the collections of the Golden Gate Bridge Highway and Transportation District, the California State Library and others. Some of his art will be out of storage and on view for the first time in decades.

Learn more about A Wild Flight of the Imagination: the Story of the Golden Gate Bridge 75th anniversary exhibit and special events taking place at the California Historical Society by visiting www.californiahistoricalsociety.org or calling 415-357-1848.