Memorial’s Mural

In his recent Op-Ed in the Herald Leader, Wendell Berry bemoans the University of Kentucky’s decision to cover Ann Rice O’Hanlon’s fresco in Memorial Hall. It is an act of extreme censorship, he writes, and even echoes “Stalinist” politicization. I cannot share his outrage, which is based in contradicting claims of politics and a restrictive view of Ann Rice O’Hanlon’s art and its relationship to history.

Wendell Berry begins his defense of displaying Ann Rice O’Hanlon’s fresco by citing its accuracy: “it shows people doing what they actually did.” But what does the fresco actually show? Berry’s list of scenes in the mural is telling. Black people working in fields, Black musicians playing for white dancers, Indians threatening settlers — sure, people did these things, but to designate this collection of actions as objective history is to engage in the type of censorship Berry tries to warn against. As far as I can tell, every single nonwhite character in the mural exists only in their relationship to white characters. This is not a history of Kentucky. This is a history of white people in Kentucky.

Because Berry recognizes this history as his own, he designates it as apolitical. This is a function of his perspective, not the painting. When Anne painted the fresco, some white people saw their history differently. This is why, according to Berry, “it took some courage to declare so boldly that slaves had worked in Kentucky fields.” In the 1930s, those who sought to censor saw the fresco depict a history they wished to forget. Because their version of history did not match the history in the fresco, the work was political. Likewise, the fresco is political today because it professes to be historical. Students, particularly those of color, look at this supposedly documentarian work and see a reductive and romanticized depiction of a violent and complex past.

Perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that Wendell Berry cannot recognize the truth in this interpretation. His Op-Ed is rooted in a personal connection with the artist, and consequently, a deep trust in her intentions. And yet, paradoxically, these ties deny Ann Rice O’Hanlon’s fresco one of art’s greatest gifts: life beyond its creator’s. If art’s meaning were really determined by artists’ intentions, as Berry implies, who (beyond historians) would have use for it? The art that populates our museums often teaches us about our past, but it also affects us in our present. It makes us feel. Ann Rice O’Hanlon’s fresco teaches us about the time in which it was painted; it also makes students at the University of Kentucky feel, intensely. These feelings, however, of alienation and hurt, are not what the university’s symbolic center should seek to inspire.