Pan American Unity is a mural painted by Mexican artist and muralist Diego Rivera for the Art in Action exhibition at Treasure Island's Golden Gate International Exposition (GGIE) in San Francisco, California in 1940.

[4] Both the San Francisco Art Commission and Board of Education received protests over the mural's content before its completion, primarily because of the included caricatures of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini.

[4] That year, while extinguishing a hangar fire on Treasure Island, one of the crates was pierced by a fireman's axe, leaving a 20 in (510 mm) gash near the portrait of Sarah Gerstel in Section 5.

[4] The current library at CCSF, which opened in 1995, was designed with a four-story atrium to hold the mural, but it was not moved amid concerns of potential damage.

[4] In 1999, a Getty Conservation Institute expert chided college personnel to consider the next two hundred years,[1] and the artist's daughter, Guadalupe Rivera Marín challenged CCSF to construct a building dedicated to the mural.

[16] The mural included the images of his wife, Frida Kahlo, woodcarver Dudley C. Carter, and himself, planting a tree and holding the hand of actress Paulette Goddard.

The mural is composed of ten panels arranged in five sections,[17] all of which relate Rivera's firmly held belief that multicultural artistic expression will form into a unified cultural entity regardless of individual points of origin.

[3] Persons depicted in Section Three include:[18][21] 'Trends of Creative Effort in the United States and the Rise of Woman in Various Fields of Creative Endeavor through Her Use of the Power of Manmade Machinery' Persons depicted in Section Four include:[18][22] 'The Creative Culture of North Developing from the Necessity of Making Life Possible in a New and Empty Land' Persons depicted in Section Five include:[18][23] In the past, people have asserted that Diego's paintings predominantly feature allegorical, figurative figures that potentially conform to societal and historical attributes assigned to women,[citation needed] which would be evidence of the male gaze in his artistic creations.

The direction that the female figures are looking varies — some meet the viewer’s gaze with confidence, while others are engrossed in their activities, creating a nuanced interplay between agency and objectification.

During the completion of the mural in November 1940, the editorial board of the Madera Times opined "There will be many who view the work who will wonder why, after it is placed in storage, it is not permitted to remain there.

"[29] Pan American Unity inspired a poem by Bob Hicok, "Rivera's Golden Gate Mural", published in his first collection of poetry, The Legend of Light.