I am, not surprisingly, someone who instinctively defends preservation of old art and architecture. Not all of it is aesthetically pleasing, but we destroy or demolish our past at our own risk. And when the art in question is being potentially destroyed because it’s controversial or nasty in some way — well, that really gets my hackles up, knowing how such designations change over time, but how what’s lost is lost forever.
On the other hand, the tale of the huge 1930s WPA mural “The Dangers of the Mail” is a bit more complex. It’s a large mural showing a group of lily-white pioneers being attacked and slaughtered by Indians — with quite a bit of focus on the Indians backstabbling fleeing frontiersmen and scalping lots of nekkid white women. It’s apparently more than a bit disturbing to some, and I don’t know as I can altogether blame them, especially since it’s inside of a major government office in Washington, DC.
So is it enough to simply hide it from view but preserve it as an historic artifact? Are the ideas of it so disturbing and disgusting that it should be simply removed from the record? Or ought it remain on display as an example of past attitudes, with, perhaps, a plaque to one side giving its history and some commentary on the violence and brutality visited by all sides of the Indian Wars of the 19th Century?
I rather like your final idea. Things like this can take an abstract knowledge of prejudice and bigotry and make it visceral, heightening our awareness.
Years ago, I saw the two Batman serials from the 1940s. In one, the narrator says, “Our wise government, having rounded up all the shifty-eyed Japs…” That was a real eye-opener for me about wartime attitudes toward Japanese-Americans.
This is a stunning piece of art, with a parallel emotional imact to Guernica. And unquestionably there were Indian raids on white settlements that were pretty close to what it depicts. To destroy the memory of such raids would be a serious distortion of history, just as allowing it to stand without contrast to white raids on Indian settlements (and the subsequent destruction of Indian culture) would be.
More importantly, it is a ‘source document’ – a real physical artifact that relates to a given time. It’s meaning can be discussed and disputed, but as long as it exists and is regularly seen, that meaning cannot be forgotten.
But who will pay for its preservation? It obviously does not belong in a government office (though it would be funny in a horrible way if it were the BIA instead of the EPA). I could live with leaving it where it is, with a large display in front of it. But that of course is quite tangential to the mission of the agency which now occupies that building.
Our local post office is fortunate to have a wonderful Albert Pels WPA mural, which shows a scholarly-looking colored man studying at a desk, along with other education-related themes. Unfortunately it is mostly blocked by a drop-ceiling. Of course there is no question about the value of preserving this work of art.
Thus our culture tips off into the rapids of destroying source artifacts, perhaps preserving them digitally at the Smithsonian where they won’t really enter into the national dialogue, and where digital documents can simply disappear without anyone knowing about it.
Maybe no conscious agency like the Smithsonian can preserve what would be destroyed – no curator could be the advocate for every artifact. Maybe in the future, Wikipedia will be the new Smithsonian, with each (digital) artifact having its own advocates. Even so, no metadata model exists for integrating such a collection; that is something curators have always done. Somehow a new model will have to emerge.
Darn you and your hard questions.
Yeah. A lot easier than coming up with the hard answers. 😛
As to the remit of the agency now in the building — well, frankly, that’s of secondary importance to me. If the EPA moved into an historic building, that wouldn’t mean they should be allowed to gut it just because the configuration of rooms doesn’t precisely match what they want. This is the same thing, IMO.
I agree with both Avo and DOF as to the need to preserve what folks thought about stuff at the time they thought it. I wouldn’t just willy-nilly get rid of it, or suppress it, or even just hide it in the back room. I might consider who I’m showing it to and what context I’d put it into. But deleting history like that is riding for a Santayana-esque fall.
DOF alsl weighs in over here.
This is a very tough question, but I have to say it should be left up, and I do like the plaque idea. If it must be taken down, at least let it sit in a museum of art. For history should never be forgotten, for it will tend to repeat itself… hmmm Iraq…