Cedar Rapids City Hall mural's unveiling reveals surprise absence

Cedar Rapids City Hall mural's unveiling reveals surprise absence Depression-era art's reference to sexually transmitted disease missing Rick Smith, The Gazette

A Great Depression-era mural on the east wall of the City Council Chamber is currently being uncovered after being painted over in the 1960s in Cedar Rapids is shown on Wednesday, April 15, 2015. The work of uncovering the art is being carried out by Fine Arts Conservation Laboratories from Santa Barbara, California. (Adam Wesley/The Gazette)

CEDAR RAPIDS — There is talk of a politically driven cultural injustice committed here in what had been a federal courtroom, now the City Hall council chambers.

The proof turned up this week as a city-hired restoration firm worked to

uncover from beneath paint a Depression-era mural for the first time in 50 years on the walls of the room.

“It's gone? Gone? Completely gone?” asked Lea DeLong, a guest curator at Iowa State University who has been called in to help investigate. Part of the reason that the four-wall mural was painted over — twice — is that federal judges who helped make the decisions were persuaded that the art was substandard, local artist Mel Andringa said Wednesday.

Thoughts on art change, though, and the city's restoration consultant is at work uncovering the mural on the third of the four walls, a wall that features some of the potentially most controversial images.

For instance, there is an image of a hanging, intended to convey Wild West justice, which in its day was directly across from the jury box. Another image shows a physician consulting with a naked patient, who is surrounded by newspaper headlines, “Sweden Defeats Syphilis” and “Play Ball.”

“It's gone? Gone? Completely gone?”

- Lea DeLong Guest curator from Iowa State University

A section of a painted-over Great Depression-era mural being uncovered on the east

wall of the City Council Chamber in Cedar Rapids is shown on Wednesday, April 15, 2015. The white areas of this section of the mural surrounding the depicted woman raising her hand were removed prior to the entire mural being painted over in the 1960s. The work of uncovering the art is being carried out by Fine Arts Conservation Laboratories from Santa Barbara, California. (Adam Wesley/The Gazette)

On Tuesday evening, Scott Haskins, president and chief conservator of Fine Art Conservation Laboratories (FACL, inc.) from California (http://www.FineArtConservationLab.com) , uncovered the latter image only to find the newspapers and their headlines were missing.

Wednesday, Haskins said decision-makers at some point in the past apparently found the headlines distasteful and had them removed from the 1930s mural before they or others subsequently decided to paint over the entire mural.

The decision in 1951 to paint over the mural for the first time, and the decision in the early 1960s to unveil the mural, and then paint over it again, did not compromise the art hidden underneath.

But destroying part of the original mural is another matter.

“The loss or damage to visual art for political reasons is probably as old as art,” Haskins said. “As long as art has been funded from political sources, someone may change how they like the art as political powers change.”

Neither he nor Seth Gunnerson, a planner for the city, knew if the mural damage was done before the first time the mural was painted over in 1951 or the second time in the early 1960s.

“It would seek logical that (the damage took place) whenever was the most politically motivated time,” Haskins said.

Bob Kocher, Marvin D. Cone professor of art emeritus at Coe College, was at Coe at the time the mural was painted over a second time, but he said he wasn't a part of the decision making.

“That never came to my attention that someone changed the mural,” Kocher said. “I wouldn't have supported that if I had been asked.”

Andringa, the local artist who is something of an expert on the mural, said Wednesday that it didn't make sense to damage the mural by removing objectionable images only to subsequently paint over it.

It was possible that decision-makers thought they could live with the mural once the syphilis image was removed, only to change their minds.

Luisa Pari works on restoring part of Great Depression-era mural on the east wall of the City Council Chamber in Cedar Rapids on Wednesday, April 15, 2015. The work of uncovering the art is being carried out by Fine Arts Conservation Laboratories from Santa Barbara, California. (Adam Wesley/The Gazette)

Andringa said the original concept sketch for the wall, which the artists had to present to federal officials overseeing the project, showed the interior of a 1930s movie theater and then a theater with happy patrons outside of it.

By the time the artist got the concept to the wall, it turned into the physician, naked patient, and the headlines instead.

Haskins said he and his colleagues should have the image of the hanging uncovered soon. He predicted the image likewise will have been damaged on purpose.

The mural sections on the front and back walls of the council chambers were uncovered in earlier restoration work and nothing from the original work was damaged.

Haskins said the city would have a few options. It could restore what was removed from the mural; leave it as an empty space; or recreate part of the original image so it doesn't stand out but people know it has been damaged.

He said the removal of the syphilis image also damaged part of the image of the physician and left an image of a woman floating in space.

“It doesn't make sense,” Haskins said. “It looks goofy. You can't say, 'Let's take it off and maybe it will make it acceptable.' It doesn't.”

Funding for the restoration of the third wall of the mural is coming from a $62,500 contribution from United Fire Group, Dee Ann McIntyre and the McIntyre Foundation, as well as a $20,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and a $27,770 grant from the State Historic Resource Development Program.

Sandi Fowler, Assistant City Manager, is in charge of raising the funds for continued mural conservation work in City Hall. Adopt a mural! Call 319 286 5077