This and all below images are from the series by Sam Kerson, The Muralist Imagines the Destruction of His Work, 2020-ongoing, available at https://dragondancetheatre.wixsite.com/underground-railroad/imagined.
The World Socialist Web Site today published an article I wrote for them to help raise public awareness of a court decision that would allow the Vermont Law School to effectively destroy two murals by Sam Kerson that commemorate the Underground Railroad. Even if at this stage the immediate decision only allows the school to cover the works, it sets a dangerous precedent under VARA that allows a group of race representatives and their supporters to destroy art that represents the history of slavery and abolition because it was not made by a black artist. Below is the original and unabridged version of my article.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/10/28/mura-o28.html
On October 20, a judge with the U.S. District Court for the State of Vermont ruled that the Vermont Law School can go forward with its plan to conceal two murals painted by the artist Sam Kerson in 1993-94. Titled The Underground Railroad, Vermont and the Fugitive Slave, the work is comprised of two 8 x 24’ panels. The first depicts the enslavement of Africans, a slave market, forced toil and a raucous scene of slave rebellion. The second mural depicts the abolitionists Frederick Douglass, John Brown, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Harriet Tubman, as well as South Royalton residents sheltering refugees as they make their way to the Canadian border. Some people, possibly Quakers, help escaped slaves mount a white horse, a symbol of peace, in front of the Vermont legislature. The murals commemorate the efforts of black and white Americans in the United States and Vermont to achieve freedom and justice.
Located in the Chase Community Center of the Vermont Law School in South Royalton, the works have been the target of student complaints over the years. Criticisms that have taken place in the context of the George Floyd protests, however, and after national debates over the fate of the Victor Arnautoff murals in the George Washington High School in San Francisco, have caused the school administration to seek to hide the murals permanently. Although black as well as white students have objected to the removal of the murals, the school has joined the wave of woke iconoclasm that has overtaken the country, from the Chicago Monuments Project, where statues of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln are being considered for removal, to the recent decision to remove a statue of Thomas Jefferson from New York City Hall.
In an effort to save his murals from destruction, Kerson challenged the school’s decision with a lawsuit based of the Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA). The 1990 law allows artists to protect their work from any “intentional distortion, mutilation, or other modification of that work which would be prejudicial to his or her honor or reputation.” The recent decision by judge Geoffrey W. Crawford finds that the school’s plan to permanently cover over the murals does not infringe on the artist’s moral rights. Since VARA does not prohibit the permanent concealment of a work of art, the judge has ruled that the school’s proposal can be compared to a museum placing a work of art in storage. Leading to this decision, however, the artist provided evidence by art conservationists that covering them will likely cause damage over time, a process of degradation that is not covered by VARA.
Conservation issues aside, the lawyers for the plaintiff, Steven Hyman and Richard Rubin, spent the better part of the October 8 court proceedings advocating on behalf of the artist’s right of integrity. That the artist’s reputational interest hinges on VARA definitions of “modification” leads away from the issues that are at stake and towards the kind of legalese where not allowing the work to be seen does not constitute modification. The question then is whether a trial is needed on the issue of honor and reputation. An even broader set of societal issues, which should be of concern to everyone, hang in the balance.
By preventing Kerson’s murals from being seen, the VLS is sending the message that there is something objectionable about them. By also accepting that damage could be caused to them, the school is also indicating that they could care less about their preservation. For these reasons the artist and his lawyers have decided to take an appeal to a second circuit court. Kerson’s lawyers, Steven Hyman and Richard Rubin, have stated: “VARA was intended to preserve our cultural history and protect the honor and reputation of the artists who contribute so much to that history. The Law School’s unyielding intent to entomb these murals – acknowledged to be of recognized stature – behind a wall so that they can never be viewed again is clearly both an affront to Mr. Kerson’s honor and reputation, and to the values intended to be preserved by the Visual Arts Rights Act.” The phrase “recognized stature” is significant here because it indicates that the school and its legal representatives acknowledge that the value and merit of the works is not disputed.
We are faced with a contradiction: a valued work of art is to be hidden from view. And how is this contradiction explained? One needs a more inclusive understanding of what is happening today to appreciate that the myths of race essentialism are covering over class contradictions that are neither acknowledge or even perceived. What is it that some students have objected to? According to court documents, the work has been denounced for “cartoonish, almost animalistic” depictions of enslaved African people. These depictions were said by the Associate Dean for student affairs and diversity, Shirley Jefferson, to have created an intolerable atmosphere. However, until the George Floyd protests, there were not enough complaints to present a resolution to remove the murals.
In this case, as in so many other instances of racialist indignation, the feelings of some students, inflamed by current trends to cancel anything that a few deem suspect, is corroborated by administrators who prefer to expediently manage a situation than assess the merits and consequences of decisions made in the name of minority constituencies. It should be obvious to anyone who has given the briefest glance at the murals that the work is fanciful and colorful, while it simultaneously elicits strong feelings about the suffering of tens of millions of slaves. What is also apparent is that all of the figures are somewhat cartoonish.
Known for his engagement with progressive causes, with murals painted for the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and graphic works on themes like nuclear catastrophe, the death penalty and the war on Palestinians, Kerson is an original and assertive stylist who has worked in various art forms, including painting, sculpture, theatre and video. But no research or thoughtful consideration for the opinions of others are to be expected from university students, it would seem, who offer only an incriminating response.
Wherever representations of race are involved, self-appointed representatives of racial groups take it upon themselves to intervene in public space in the interest of individual, group and community “empowerment.” Since many in academia and the activist milieu have adopted postmodernism’s replacement of universalism with questions of difference, political commitments have become relativized according to the prerogatives of identity. In the context of woke cancelations, progressives are expected to think of themselves as “allies” rather than citizens, let alone comrades. There is less concern shown for whether or not a work of art or someone’s career is being destroyed than there is for the pretense that such activism is challenging the norms of privilege.
The trouble with today’s anti-racists is that they substitute discussions of social inequality with accusations of institutional racism and demands for symbolic reparation. That they do so in ways that reinforce the dynamics of capitalism is confirmed by the statement made by Justin Barnard, the school’s attorney. Barnard emphasized the feeling some had that the “black bodies” were depicted in a stereotyped manner that is inconsistent with the school’s mandate. This focus on bodies rather than people is not only typical of consumerism but also of the academic displacement of Marxist materialism in favor of more reductive and politically narrow agendas. These ideas were repeated to the media by Glenn J. Berger, the chairman of the school Board. Like gossip, dubious ideas and groundless claims get passed from one person to another. Eventually, even the reasonable start to believe it. On this count, it is worth mentioning that the artist has chronicled his saga with a series of artworks, The Artist Imagines the Destruction of his Work. This biting satire includes one image where men in suits, as in Breughel’s The Blind Leading the Blind, follow one another into a pit of censorious despair.
The process through which anti-racists transform anti-racist art into supposedly racist art needs to be explained rather than simply witnessed or accepted as reality. One could begin by considering the small progress that has been made since July 2020, when the school’s plans were to “paint over” the murals on the say-so of students Jameson Davis and April Urbanowski that the artworks are racist. An email later sent by Dean Thomas McHenry stated that the murals are offensive and inconsistent with the school’s commitment to fairness, inclusion, diversity and social justice. One has to wonder if these words even mean anything to this administration. Before the recent complaints, McHenry did not even know about the murals’ existence.
In August 2020, and in order to comply with VARA guidelines, the VLS Board of Trustees notified the artist that he was free to remove the murals and take ownership of them. But the murals cannot be moved without being destroyed. At the earliest stage, therefore, when the actual decision was made, neither the students nor McHenry were concerned about the “recognized stature” of the work. This only came into play after the diversitarians had manufactured their controversy. Berger has made it known that covering the works is only a preliminary strategy and the school will further urge the District Court to allow it to remove the mural. The school has rejected the proposition that the murals be covered with a retractable curtain, which would allow them to be seen anytime. It prefers to cover them permanently and wait until the 74-year old artist dies, at which time VARA will no longer be applicable.
One could expect more from a school that teaches law than winning an ill-conceived case on technicalities. Would it be unfair to expect that someone at the school be informed about how the conversion from modernism to postmodernism in cultural theory has brought with it some undesirable consequences? The shift towards identity politics has brought with it a certain relativism in culture as well as politics, now justified as standpoint epistemology. Rather than questions of social-historical context in the study of art, one is now attentive to subtext. Works of art are not subject to art education and appreciation, but to interrogation and the fetishism of perceived violations. The anti-humanist “hermeneutics of suspicion” that is now practiced by diversity experts coincides with the shift of emphasis from production process to consumer and lifestyle concerns. In the words of Jameson and Urbanowski, “not all intentions align with interpretation.” The non-alignment of the artist’s work with the opinions of these law students should serve, they argue, as a “current example” of racial conflict. In their view, this culture war clash that they have stoked should be corrected by choosing a black muralist to paint new murals, since, they say, “the story of Black experience should be told by Black people.” This turning of tables is problematic in itself but is highly disingenuous given the fact that one of the people who assisted in painting these works is the black artist Kenny Hughes. The dedication of the murals also included a speech given by the prominent civil rights activist Florynce Kennedy.
Does no one at the VLS teach the concept of judicial bias? Do we really want to create a generation of judges who condemn white defendants on account of the history of slavery? For those who are not in the know concerning the latest injunctions, anti-oppression workshops and sensitivity training offer new lessons in superstition, with do’s and don’ts that are as ambiguous as they are Pavlovian.
In the context of neoliberalized creative and knowledge industries, the good intentions of people who are dedicated to “all of the above” issues of race, class, gender and sexuality coincide with the Democratic Party’s rejection of even meagre social reforms and its adoption of the demographics game. Political appeals to people on the basis of their identity, such that murals like Kerson’s Underground Railroad would be terrific, if only the artist were black, undermine the universalist thrust of social progress. Racial justice is instead practiced as equal opportunity exploitation within the parameters of capitalism, now dedicated to identitarian obscurantism.
The notion that tearing down works by progressive artists will bring about social justice would be laughable if only the demand for whites and members of other so-called “privileged” groups to step aside and center black lives did not come with bullying tactics and McCarthy-like managerial punishments. In Vermont, high school principal Tiffany Riley was fired for stating on her personal Facebook that she did not think people should have to choose between the black race and the human race. When consulted on the Kerson case, Senator Bernie Sanders deferred to the decisions of the VLS administration and to the phenomenon of Black Lives Matter.
If the answer is “because black lives matter,” what then is the question? With some luck, an incident like this can lead to reflection and deliberation, but with so many “national conversations” being started on so many fronts, it is necessary to abstract from particulars and make some generalizations about what is happening. And for this to be done with any degree of justice, postmodern nihilism, race reductionism and political relativism will not do. The working class must stand firm and support artists like Sam Kerson and composer Bright Sheng in their struggles against this destructive trend of social opportunism.