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Museum: Statues, schooling and ‘HD on steroids’

The 49ers Museum presented by Sony, like the stadium to which it is attached, doesn’t skimp on tech. But it also makes use of artifacts going all the way to the team’s origins in the old All-America Football Conference to take fans through time.

In its first month of operation, about 25,000 people have visited the 20,000-square-foot museum and toured the 11 galleries, which are designed with curved walls to represent a spiraling football, said Jesse Lovejoy, the museum’s director.

Museum displays tie the 49ers’ struggles and successes with the history of the whole San Francisco Bay Area.
Photo by: DON MURET / STAFF
The experience starts with an 18-minute film in a small theater documenting the team’s history from its launch in 1946 to modern day. The film was shot with Sony 4K cameras, essentially “HD on steroids,” Lovejoy said. “It’s the pinnacle of technology.”

The short feature weaves the team’s struggles and successes into Bay Area history, starting with the death of Tony Morabito, the 49ers’ original owner, who died of a heart attack at Kezar Stadium during a 1957 game against the Chicago Bears, and continuing with Harvey Milk, the city’s first openly gay politician, murdered in 1978. Harry Edwards, the famed UC Berkeley sociologist and a close friend of the late Bill Walsh, the 49ers’ hall of fame coach, lends to the narrative with his perspective on a region yearning to grab hold of a team that would become dominant in the 1980s.

The Niners conducted every interview in the film with the exception of a sound bite from Dianne Feinstein, San Francisco’s mayor from 1979 to ’88.

Jerry Rice, the NFL’s all-time touchdown leader, draws a laugh with a memorable line on his close relationship with Joe Montana, his teammate and 49ers quarterback: “If I was female, I would date him.”

The first gallery showcases 25 silver statues representing the 25 members of the 49ers’ hall of fame. The life-size figures are made of steel equipped with real jerseys, pants filled with pads, and cleats, covered in a resin substance.

StudioEIS, the same firm that designed the 42 statues of American forefathers at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, spent 400 hours building each 49ers statue, Lovejoy said.

Some statues are grouped and others are cast in individual poses, such as halfback Roger Craig’s classic style of running with his knees high up. A spotlight bounces around the room on each statue, triggering an audio loop to hear a teammate talk about the player in question.

A popular interactive piece is a touch screen where visitors can search by name for every person who played for the 49ers and cross reference others by uniform number and college. The list covered 1,295 players before the final roster for the first regular-season game Sept. 14 at Levi’s Stadium.

“I’ve seen kids look up their dads, parents look up their grandparents,” Lovejoy said. “Now we can say with certainty that every player who played for us is in the museum, which was very important to us when we built it.”

More traditional museum displays spread across multiple galleries include Walsh’s original desk from the team’s old Redwood City offices; a handwritten letter from fourth-grader and current 49ers QB Colin Kaepernick wishing to play for San Francisco; an old Huey Lewis and the News “Fore!” album cover listing Montana, Dwight Clark and other 49ers as backup singers; and a poster from a three-day rock concert at Kezar Stadium featuring a who’s who of 1960s Bay Area music, including Quicksilver Messenger Service, Mike Bloomfield and Janis Joplin.

The museum also serves as a learning tool for students through the Denise DeBartolo York Education Center, part of the team’s community outreach. The 49ers hired educator Matt van Dixon as the museum’s head teacher plus eight part-time teacher assistants. Together, they educate kids in kindergarten through eighth grade, applying football’s principles to the basics of science, technology, engineering and math. For the first year, the museum expects to serve 21,000 students. The 49ers cover all expenses for students to visit the museum “to remove barriers for entry,” Lovejoy said.

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