Zio Ziegler, Untitled, June 2015

Private money funds a Zio Ziegler mural, Untitled (2015), on the renowned Cathedral Building while Oakland is referred to as the new up and coming with a happening art scene that is true to few currently residing in the city. Ziegler’s brightly colored mural cannot be missed as it can be seen from blocks away. While the mural has no visible correlation with the residence or events (current or historical) in Oakland it is a crowd favorite among the new comers to the city. This new mural seems to have made its mark on Oakland and sets a tone for the future of murals and culture of Oakland.

To begin, the historic gothic style revival Cathedral Building sits at the intersection of Telegraph and Broadway, which are two of the busiest streets in Oakland. Built in 1914, it is unlikely that anyone has come close to gaining permission to paint a mural on the side of it, until the United Nation (UN) Foundation commissioned Ziegler to create a mural in order to commemorate the UN’s seventeenth anniversary. The UN “…wanted to partner with a local artist to create a mural, paintings, and merchandise based on its new global goals that are also a focus of the celebration.”i Originally, the mural was planned to execute the mural on a building near San Francisco’s War Memorial Opera House, which is the location of the 1945 signing of the UN Charter, but after talk of Oakland’s “exploding art scene” the mural was decided to be done in Oakland.ii This is interesting considering the current socioeconomics in Oakland UN’s goals of the mural to address and tackle extreme poverty and climate change. "People our age are relatively disconnected with the UN, and I think it could be very relevant again," said Ziegler in a recent interview, "But it would take an encouragement of something graphically intriguing enough so that someone would actually want to participate, wear it, endorse it, share it." i