[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/GettyImages-2272929509.jpg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n
\n\tThe family of 96-year-old Quebecois sculptor Armand Vaillancourt is not giving up the fight to save the 710-ton concrete landmark known as Qu\u00e9bec Libre!<\/em> or the Vaillancourt Fountain<\/em>. The public artwork has been an iconic, if controversial, part of the landscape of San Francisco\u2019s Embarcadero Plaza since it was constructed in 1971.<\/p>\n \n\tHowever, last summer, San Francisco\u2019s arts commission, which owns the work, was asked if would \u201cdeaccession\u201d the sculpture in order to accommodate the city\u2019s planned renovation of the plaza.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cIt\u2019s one of urban America\u2019s truly bizarre works of public art,\u201d John King, a former architecture critic at the San Francisco Chronicle<\/em>, told the New York Times<\/em> last fall. \u201cAnd a reminder of midcentury mistakes.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tAfter months of back-and-forth debate between local officials and Vaillancourt Fountain<\/em> supporters, the city began dismantling it this week; the disassembly and relocation is expected to take several months and cost $4 million, reported the CBC<\/em>.<\/p>\n \n\tVaillancourt\u2019s son Alexis, who is also an artist, is involved with the campaign to keep the fountain in place. Alexis and a group called Friends of the Plaza are challenging the city\u2019s use of an emergency exemption to decommission the sculpture. The exemption in question, part of the California Environmental Quality Act, can only be used in the case of a \u201csudden, unexpected occurrence\u201d that requires \u201cimmediate action,\u201d leaving no time for a proper review.<\/p>\n \n\tThe state of the Vaillancourt Fountain<\/em>\u2019s disrepair does not meet this standard, argues Friends of the Plaza lawyer Susan Brandt-Hawley. Therefore, she has filed an appellate petition to prevent the ongoing demolition of the public artwork. \u201cThere is no emergency,\u201d she writes, in defense of the fountain, which she calls a \u201cunique, storied resource of undisputed local, state, and national historic significance.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/family-nonagenarian-sculptor-fighting-halt-demolition-iconic-brutalist-fountain-downtown-san-francisco-1234783308\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/GettyImages-2272929509.jpg?w=1024″] The family of 96-year-old Quebecois sculptor Armand Vaillancourt is not giving up the fight to save the 710-ton concrete landmark known as Qu\u00e9bec Libre! or the Vaillancourt Fountain. The public artwork has been an iconic, if controversial, part of the landscape of San Francisco\u2019s Embarcadero Plaza since it was constructed in 1971. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-1914010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1914010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1914010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1914010\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1914010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1914010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1914010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}