Controversial Content of WPA Mural Recreated During Art Restoration in Cedar Rapids City Hall

Controversial Content of WPA Mural Recreated During Art Restoration in Cedar Rapids City Hall Image with mention of ‘syphilis' is restored on Depression-era mural based on historic photos Cedar Rapids, Government, News, Public Art Rick Smith, The Gazette APRIL 24, 2015

A section of the mural in the City Council Chamber in Cedar Rapids is shown in the midst of being recreated on Friday, April 24, 2015. The work of recreating the art is being carried out by Fine Art Conservation Laboratories from Santa Barbara, California. (Michael Noble Jr./The Gazette)

CEDAR RAPIDS — An image that was likely removed from a Depression Era mural because of its message has been restored at the recommendation of city officials, with the help of the city’s Visual Arts Commission.

The removed image in the mural showed newspapers with the headlines Sweden Defeats Syphilis and Play Ball surrounding a depiction of a physician with a naked patient in 193“, when the mural was painted.

Seth Gunnerson, a planner in the city’s Community Development Department, on Friday said his department, at the recommendation of the city’s Visual Arts Commission, opted to restore the image to the mural at the advice of Scott Haskins, president and chief conservator of Fine Art Conservation Laboratories (FACL, Inc.), Santa Barbara, Calif.

Haskins, whose firm is restoring the third wall of the four-wall mural under contract with the city, said the best option was to restore the image so that it did not stand out, but at the same time so there was some indication that it wasn’t part of the original painting.

One of the members of his restoration crew recreated the newspapers with headlines in black and white, but without coloring that he said appeared to be part of the original image, he said.

However, he said most who view the mural won’t know there had been damage to it and that someone added the missing image, he said.

The mural, which wraps around what had been a federal courtroom and is now the City Council chambers, was painted over in 1956 and uncovered in 1963 during a room renovation. It was then quickly painted over again as the federal court system concluded that the art was not important enough to display.

One panel of the mural, which shows a scene of a Wild West vigilante hanging, is directly across from what had been the room’s jury box, which prompted complaints from attorneys that helped advance the decision to paint over the mural.

The city acquired the building in a swap of property, with the new federal courthouse built on what had been city-owned property.

The city decided to restore the mural as the city prepared to move into the renovated former courthouse in 2011.

Haskins’ crew is finishing up the restoration of the mural on a third wall of the council chambers.

Earlier, the city had the mural sections on two other walls restored, and the city is raising money to have the fourth wall uncovered.

The third wall features the vigilante hanging juxtaposed with 1930s law enforcement and images of the practice of superstition, next to images of the arrival of modern medicine.

The final panel, with the syphilis headline, initially had been sketched by the artist to be a family headed into a movie theater. But the approved image (by the Washington based WPA office) changed from sketch to when it was painted on the wall.

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