UC Berkeley Exhibition Highlights Ernest and Esther Born’s Bay Area Legacy

Taylor Mall Looking South. Wharf. Bolles, John S., and Ernest Born. 1961. A Plan for Fisherman's Wharf Comprising the Fisherman's Wharf–Aquatic Park Area. Prepared for the San Francisco Port Authority. San Francisco Public Library. https://digitalsf.org/record/109612.

Ernest and Esther Born played a key role in the development of San Francisco modernism. Through their work in design, photography, graphics, and planning, they helped shape San Francisco as a modern city. Their influence on the fabric of the Bay Area is felt in master plans for BART, in the urban renewal of San Francisco’s waterfront, and in other public and private architecture projects.

Now featured in Modernism: Born in California, an exhibition at UC Berkeley’s Environmental Design Archives, the Borns get the retrospective they deserve. The show runs until September 30, 2026, in the Lifchez / Stronach Exhibition Cases at the Environmental Design Library in Bauer Wurster Hall. It follows the Borns’ careers from their student days at Berkeley in the 1920s through the urban renewal period of the 1960s.

The exhibition features the Borns’ photography, architecture, curatorial work, and graphic design to show how they influenced Bay Area Modernism and includes projects such as Alcatraz, Fisherman’s Wharf, the Embarcadero, the Greek Theater reconstruction, and other important civic and cultural commissions.

Ernest and Esther Born helped shape San Francisco modernism through their work in architecture, photography, graphic design, and planning. UC Berkeley’s exhibition, Modernism: Born in California, is open through September 30, 2026, and includes work from the 1920s to the 1960s at the Environmental Design Library in Bauer Wurster Hall.