Homage to Burlingame’s namesake

“The City Council wanted to honor Burlingame’s values and diplomacy, and that’s why we commissioned this artwork,” Councilmember Michael Brownrigg said. “This artwork also celebrates diplomacy between nations and mutual respect.”

The gates are joined by a path with white and green painted stripes connecting in a knot, with a series of six wooden benches along the way. Carved into the benches are quotes from Martin Luther King, Toni Morrison, Sojourner Truth, Chief Joseph and Mark Twain.

The design of the work, titled “Anson Burlingame and the Principles of Eternal Justice,” has been in the works since 2017 as a collaboration between a group of city leaders and Oakland artist John Roloff.

The arts and crafts gate is a nod to the architecture style prominent during Burlingame’s early history, and the style many homes in the city are built in, Roloff said. The red gate meanwhile is modeled after a common architectural feature in Chinese gardens representing the half moon of Chinese summers.

Burlingame’s quotes were carefully translated into Chinese and carved into the red gate, Lance Fung said, an art curator who oversaw the installation and is responsible for other public art in the city.

The gates were constructed by Southern Grain Craftsmen, a Santa Cruz company that sourced the redwood from trees that required removal during the CZU Lightning Complex fires in 2020. The red gate is made from 1,200 individual pieces of poplar wood, cut by a Computer Numerical Control machine and glued together to form the arch. The lettering on the gates and bench was also carved with a CNC machine and hand painted.

Among quotes from Burlingame are “the people are the source of power” and “free migration and emigration of the citizens and subjects.”

Burlingame, a Massachusetts congressman, is recognized as believing in equality and being ardently antislavery. In the years leading up the Civil War, he declared Massachusetts would not comply with a law that required the return of people who had escaped slavery to southern states. He agreed to a duel to the death over his stance on the law, though the southern congressman who challenged him called the fight off.

Burlingame would later go on to aid in Abraham Lincoln’s campaign for president in hopes Lincoln would end slavery. In 1861, he became a U.S. ambassador to China and later negotiated the Burlingame Treaty, which sought to establish equal rights between the nations and gave Chinese people the right to free immigration among other things.

“Burlingame’s historical and global voice is needed now more than ever,” Roloff said. “That’s why I decided to literally carve Burlingame’s words of equity, justice and cooperation into the two anchoring Eastern and Western portals.”

Fung, a Chinese American, tied the art to the need for unity in the face of a recent wave of hate crimes toward Asian Americans.

“I have never had a feeling of being uncomfortable until recently, and it’s palpable,” he said.

The city of Burlingame, historically very white, has seen its population diversify in recent decades. The city was nearly 90% white 30 years ago. Today whites are closer to 50% while Asians make up nearly 30%.

A plaque with information on the art and the quotes chosen will be added to accompany the installation at a later date.

The installation was paid for by multinational real estate developer Kylli and an anonymous private donor. The installation was estimated to cost $220,000. Kylli developed and owns Burlingame Point, a technology campus where Meta’s Oculus is headquartered.

corey@smdailyjournal.com

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