The San Francisco Unified School District’s Board of Education has voted unanimously to get rid of a mural that has sprawled for more than 80 years across the entrance of George Washington High School. Exactly how to remove it has yet to be worked out.
Opponents of the mural said Tuesday night at the board’s regular meeting that they want the artwork out of sight as soon as possible, which would likely mean hiding it behind solid paneling. It might yet be painted over and destroyed forever, but legal challenges would likely cause delays.
“We won’t know for sure, but chances of painting over prior to paneling are probably long,” board member Mark Sanchez said after the meeting.
The mural, in 13 panels, depicts the life of George Washington. The muralist, a Russian emigre named Victor Arnautoff, included African-American slaves on Washington’s property and the dead body of a Native American as a criticism of U.S. history. He painted it in the 1930s, when it was unusual, perhaps even radical, to note how Washington’s (and America’s) prosperity depended upon the enslavement and genocide of other humans.
Critics of the mural have argued for years that the images, whatever their political intent and artistic value, are harmful to students, viewed day after day. “Yes, they’ve learned how they were treated, but it’s like a loop,” Norm Mattox, a retired SF public school teacher, said after the vote. “It’s worse than Groundhog Day.”
The SFUSD board and its superintendent Vincent Matthews agreed. Matthews, who went to San Francisco’s McAteer High School, said that when he visited Washington High as a teenager and saw the mural, “it was like a chunk of my soul was pulled out.”
Matthews said his first response was “paint it over,” but like many on the board, he acknowledged that destruction of the mural would require an environmental review and could take up to three years — all while kids would be walking past the mural every day.
Michelle Antone, who is involved in Native American health and education in San Francisco, said she was disappointed that the mural might not be painted over, “but I’ll take it.” She cited a Native prophecy that fortunes change with the seventh generation: “Things are flowing the other way,” she added, noting the removal of an offensive statue near City Hall last year and Governor Gavin Newsom’s apology last week for Native American genocide.
Speakers in support of the mural like Lope Yap Jr., the vice president of the high school’s alumni association, made it clear during comments that a move to destroy the artwork would be challenged using a state environmental regulation known as CEQA — a sure way to drag out a public process. (California also has regulations governing works of art that have to be followed, Yap Jr. said.)
The board’s vote on Tuesday, then, kept options open. Members voted to paint it over. But if faced with delays, several members as well as Superintendent Matthews made it clear that they preferred getting the mural quickly out of sight. According to the school district’s top facilities manager, the cost of paneling could run between $650,000 and $825,000. Painting over the mural would start at $600,000, she said, but that likely would go higher to pay for an environmental review.
Amid the back and forth discussion of costs, Sanchez remarked that the district was justified in spending the money. “Consider it reparations,” he said.
Opponents and supporters of the mural each said that hiding it with paneling would be an acceptable compromise. Juan Fuentes, a printmaker, said he preferred a curtain that could be pulled back to let people view the mural, but “at least the panels would preserve it for now.”
The mural’s opponents, including Native American parents and students who helped pack the school district’s hearing room and lobby, noted that the vote came exactly 143 years after Lakota Sioux, Arapaho, and Cheyenne fighters defeated George Custer’s troops at the Battle of Little Bighorn.
If the mural remains hidden but preserved, could it eventually be moved? Its critics were OK with that — one speaker said, “If you want the murals so much, put them in your home or take them to a museum” — but that’s not so simple. They were created as frescoes, the paint soaking into wet plaster, which means moving them would be expensive and risky. But in a city bursting with innovation, technical and otherwise, perhaps a cooling-off period — with the mural out of sight, if not entirely out of mind — would allow some time for a solution.
Five years from now, perhaps someone will figure out how to take the historically significant mural to a museum. That would be a victory for everyone.
Alex Lash is Editor in Chief of The Frisc.