Can Art Change the World? Inside the Debate Raging Over Black Lives Matter Murals

Is art a distraction from change or a catalyst? That’s the question at the heart of Black Lives Matter Plaza in D.C. — and across the United States.

Painters work on a mural on 16th Street in Washington, DC June 5, 2020 before the renaming of the street Black Lives Matter Way in front of St. Johns Church. Photo: Toni Sandys/The Washington Post via Getty Images

By Mark Wilson

Keyonna Jones received the call from a fellow artist one Thursday night in early June, and she agreed to the job without knowing what or where she’d be painting. The friend told her it would be a mural somewhere in her hometown of Washington, D.C.

“When they first called me, they didn’t have any details other than there was a budget,” Jones says. But that was enough to bring her on board. The mother of two had recently shut down the nonprofit organization she founded, Congress Heights Arts & Culture Center, due to COVID-19. Money had been tight since.

That evening at 8 p.m., she hopped onto a Zoom call with seven other artists, and that’s when she found out what the project would be. “It was going to be Black Lives Matter, in front of the White House, spanning a few blocks,” Jones says. The project, ordered by D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser herself, would have to start at 3:30 a.m.. “I was like, whoa, this is pretty serious,” Jones says. “I start going into shock, that I’m going…