San Francisco School District Considers Recommendation To Destroy New Deal Mural
The 83-year-old frescos are incompatible with the school district’s values, an ad hoc community group concluded.
By Walter Thompson
In conservative circles, “San Francisco Values” is shorthand for the worst excesses of social engineering and virtue signaling. It’s a term locals embrace proudly. In truth, the city is riven by economic inequality and racial segregation — but local laws and cultural traditions have carved out systems and spaces where small groups can usually be heard from, if not always listened to:
Last June, the city’s Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to rename a street after Mexican artist Frida Kahlo; previously, the avenue was named for the father of a mayor and U.S. senator who promoted racist immigration policies a century ago;
Outside City Hall, an empty pedestal marks the spot where a 2,000-pound bronze sculpture titled “Early Days” once depicted a Native American at the feet of Catholic missionary Junipero Serra. As workers hoisted the piece onto a trailer in the early morning hours last September, a small crowd watched, a few burning sage to banish the negative energy.
Another history debate is playing out today at George Washington High School. Set atop a rise in a residential district that offers views of the downtown skyline, the Golden Gate Bridge and the Marin Headlands beyond, the school was built in 1936 under the auspices of the Works Progress Administration, a Depression-era federal public works program.
The experience of walking into the Streamline Moderne-style building’s main entrance hasn’t changed in 83 years: after pulling open doors watched over by bas-relief sculptures of Edison, Shakespeare and Washington, students climb stairs flanked by a mural painted by Victor Arnautoff, a Russian émigré who worked closely with Diego Rivera and as a solo artist and advisor on other murals around San Francisco and throughout the United States.
Depending on who you ask, his 1600-square-foot installation at George Washington High School is either an unflinching look at American history, or a stark depiction of violence against oppressed minorities. Spanning the staircase and a first-floor landing, Arnautoff depicted Washington in multiple scenes from his life, but two in particular have generated controversy for more than 50 years:
In one, the statesman stands over a map of a young America while pointing westward; at the end of his arm, four white trappers and militiamen rendered in monochrome walk over the full-color body of a deceased Indian whose face is turned away from the viewer. At the dead man’s feet, another Native American wearing a headdress sits at a campfire and shares a pipe with a white man cradling a rifle.
On the opposite wall, the owner of the plantation at Mount Vernon confers with a white man who gestures at Washington’s slave laborers: a shoeless black man shucking corn, three stooped, faceless black women in the far distance picking cotton, and another black man who hammers wood for a team of white men manufacturing barrels.
When the frescos were unveiled in June 1936, The San Francisco Chronicle gave its unqualified approval: “Arnautoff goes back to the facts of colonial days, with all their conflict, idealism and fierce reality,” reported the art critic.
“The parts of the murals that are controversial are relatively small, so I didn’t even notice them until it was pointed out to me by history teachers and ethnic studies teachers,” said senior Max Bormann, 18.
Although he believes Arnautoff meant to demythologize Washington, Bormann said it’s time to remove the murals.
“The intention matters, but the way it’s shown reflects poorly,” he said. “If you looked at it and you didn’t know the history of the work, you just see white people owning people and enslaving people without any of the idea that this was the real history.”
To address complaints from parents of Native American and black students, San Francisco Unified School District last year assembled a “Reflection and Action” working group. Comprised of school administrators, students, parents, artists and other members of the community, the group concluded on April 9th that Arnautoff’s work should be removed.
“The majority of the group expressed that the main reason to keep the mural up at the school is focused on the legacy of the artist, rather than experience of the students,” according to a SFUSD statement. The district superintendent is considering the recommendation; ultimately, the matter will be decided by the SF Board of Education.
Gray Brechin is an author and historian who founded The Living New Deal, a nonprofit that seeks to preserve art and public works created by the Works Progress Administration. To save the murals, he’s working with the Washington HS Alumni Association, the only member of the working group that voted to preserve “Life of Washington.”
“There’s this group of people, some students — mostly their parents I believe — who not only want the two controversial murals removed, but all 13 of them,” said Brechin, referring to other WPA murals in the school dedicated to art, education and literature. [This may also refer to 13 other murals in the school district, I’ve asked him to clarify.] “They say it glorifies racism, genocide, white supremacy, Manifest Destiny, you name it.”
Because the recommendation to archive and remove the artwork could be used as a template for addressing other controversial art, Brechin said he fears that all New Deal murals are vulnerable, starting with a series at Mission High School that includes Spanish missionaries teaching “neophyte Indians,” according to the title of one installation.
“What we’re looking at is the classic slippery slope,” he said. “If the murals can be destroyed, then no work of art that anyone finds offensive is going to be safe. And that’s an awful lot of art.”
Brechin has raised the idea of using the auditorium at George Washington High School to stage a conference about suppressed art. “I think there needs to be a discussion right now about what we do with these works of art that are under attack,” he said.
According to Nora Lapin, a 1960 Washington graduate, the debate should be addressed with education, not destruction. “What we need is a plaque next to the murals which explains the basis in history and also Arnautoff’s credentials as a major artist,” she told The Guardian. “What he’s portraying in that mural is fact.”
In 1968, Washington’s Black Student Union called on the school district to correct what students described as historical inaccuracies. Eventually, they compromised on a plan to install permanent plaques with supplemental information, but it’s unclear if any were ever added.
When students protested again in 1974, the district commissioned African-American muralist Dewey Crumpler to create a work that recontextualized Arnautoff’s murals by celebrating aspects of Asian, Latinx, Native American and African-American culture. Using vibrant acrylic paint on canvas, Crumpler’s “Multi-Ethnic Heritage” triptych is still mounted in the school’s main hall, though it takes up slightly less than a quarter of the square footage occupied by Arnautoff’s frescoes.
Lapin said she’s skeptical of contemporary claims that the 83-year-old Washington artwork creates a negative environment. “There were black students who never objected to it,” she said, describing her alma mater as “an extremely diverse school” in the 1950s.
Demographics have shifted considerably; the year Lapin graduated, ten percent of San Franciscans were black; today, only about five percent are.
Of the 2,010 students enrolled at Washington during the 2016-2017 school year, six identified as American Indian and 77 were African American, with Asian students representing sixty-four percent of the population, followed by Hispanic students, who comprised just over seventeen percent of the student body. Slightly more than eight percent of George Washington High School’s students are white.
“The one thing I do know is that Washington is not nearly as good as it used to be. None of the schools are, because teachers don’t get paid enough,” Lapin said, noting that many of her neighbors send their children to private schools.
“So the people who go to them are not the most sophisticated or whatever. You see what I’m trying to say? It’s a totally different population than it was.” Many aspects of American history are “painful,” she observed. “I think the problem is these kids are ignorant. Nobody’s told them that we had slaves and that we killed Indians.”
Although some find the images “disturbing,” Gray said he would encourage viewers to recall that Arnautoff intended to cast America’s first president in a more realistic light.
“The students there at George Washington aren’t looking at violence, they’re looking at a metaphorical representation of it,” he said. “So it’s hard for me, but of course, I’m white and privileged.”