Past Artists' Legacies of Generosity Embolden Emerging Artists

Since 1986, The San Francisco Foundation has administered the annual Jack K. and Gertrude Murphy Fellowships and the Edwin Anthony and Adelaide Boudreaux Cadogan Scholarships. The Murphy and Cadogan awards are emblematic of The San Francisco Foundation’s community of donors’ enduring legacy of generosity, foresight, and commitment to supporting succeeding generations of artistic, civic, and community innovation. This year’s exhibit, Frontrunners, is currently featured at the SOMArts Cultural Center, and culminates with a public awards ceremony and reception at 6:30 p.m. on Friday, September 16, 2011.

Edwin Anthony and Adelaide Boudreaux Cadogan both experienced financial difficulties while in art school and understood the great difference scholarships could make during this early phase in an artist’s career. Edwin was an alumnus of Berkeley High School, worked primarily in oil painting and stoneware pottery, and Adelaide devoted herself to painting and sculpture. They met while attending the San Francisco Art Institute and later were both active members of the Marin Society of Artists. Edwin went on to head the art department at College of Marin, where Cadogan Hall is named in his honor. The Cadogans never had children. In a handwritten letter to The San Francisco Foundation, Mrs. Cadogan wrote that she wanted "art students of the future to be our children."
 
After receiving news that she was selected for a Jack K. and Gertrude Murphy Fellowship, Sofia Sharpe was able to devote those precious, fleeting summer months between school years at Mills College to furthering her artistic exploration and practice. Ms. Sharpe and her fellow twenty-two 2011 awardees are living tributes to Jack K. and Gertrude Murphy’s and Edwin Anthony and Adelaide Boudreaux Cadogan’s love for the arts and the Bay Area.

View more photos of the Frontrunners exhibit online, and watch more of the awardees discussing their work here.

Many thanks to the Anne T. Kent California Room at the Marin County Free Library and the San Francisco History Center at the San Francisco Public Library for their generous research assistance.