Artist's lawsuit against school that sought to cover up his murals heads to appeals court
Arguments over whether the Vermont Law School will be allowed to cover up an artist’s mural that African American students there find objectionable, or if the artist’s rights as defined by federal statute will compel the school to keep it on view, were presented last week in an appellate court in Vermont.
The ruling likely will be closely watched by other institutions and municipalities around the country where other murals—and questions about what to do with them—have become the focal points of sometimes-bitter debates.
The murals in question were commissioned in 1993 by the Vermont Law School (now the Vermont Law and Graduate School, or VLGS), and the artist Sam Kerson, 76, who currently lives in Trois-Rivières, Québec in Canada, was selected to create painted images celebrating Vermont’s role in the underground railroad, which enabled enslaved people in the US South to escape bondage and flee to safety in the northeast and Canada. In 1994, the murals were painted directly onto the sheet rock walls in Chase Hall at VLGS in South Royalton, Vermont. Each mural is eight feet by 24 feet in size, the first entitled Slavery and containing four scenes: the capture of people in Africa, selling humans in the US, slave labour and insurrection. The second mural is entitled Liberation and also contains four scenes: images of Harriet Beecher Stowe, John Brown and Frederick Douglas Harriet Tubman arriving in Vermont, South Royalton Vermont residents sheltering the formerly enslaved and Vermonters providing travel aide to the formerly enslaved with the state capital in the background.
The initial reception of the murals was positive, but by 2020 some students voiced objections to the images, calling them “Sambo-like” and racist, based on the way in which Kerson depicted the enslaved figures. “The law school acknowledged that Kerson’s intentions in creating these murals were good,” says Justin Barnard, the lawyer representing the school in this action. “However, over the decades, and especially after the death of George Floyd in 2020, the school administrators decided that they could not avoid the voices of students who were critical of the murals.”
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https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2023/02/01/lawsuit-covered-murals-sam-kerson-vermont-law-graduate-school
As an Art Historian, I am almost always in favor of preserving art. However, having seen the images in question, I find myself siding with the school in this case. While the artist may have been well-intentioned, the caricatures of enslaved peoples is offensive, even if unintentionally.
Maybe a creative solution could be mediated somehow? Like a commentary on the work permanently installed, done by Black artists or scholars?
Or a revision done by the original artist alongside a team of Black artists?
Bottom line: the current situation is not good.
= new reply since forum marked as read
TATE MODERN
EXHIBITION
HYUNDAI COMMISSION
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