Beloved painting in peril
Leaky roof, shortage of funds threaten prize work by Houston muralist John Biggers
An aging roof springing a leak is typically something only a homeowner would be worked up about. But when water is dripping above a million-dollar work of art by Houston muralist John Biggers, it’s a national artistic emergency.
“Contribution of Negro Women to American Life and Education” — a 1953 piece depicting the strength of matriarchs, pioneers and survivors — covers a wall inside a room at the Blue Triangle Multi-Cultural Association’s headquarters in Third Ward. Warped, water-stained ceiling tiles sit directly above the wall where the mural is painted.
Biggers, born in 1924, was among the young black artists whose work was included in a landmark exhibit at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art in 1943. He was recruited to what became Texas Southern University in 1949 to start and chair its art department. “The Cradle,” a 1950 Biggers drawing, is considered the cornerstone of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston’s African-American collection and is included in an exhibition of black art on display through April. Biggers was 76 when he died in 2001.
The gauzy and intense Blue Triangle mural features Harriet Tubman, who led enslaved people to freedom on the Underground Railroad, and Sojourner Truth, an abolitionist and women’s rights activist, as dominant figures. The piece also depicts the work of 18th century poet Phillis Wheatley as well as the detailed hands and feet of laborers to portray working people.
Charlotte Kelly Bryant, the Blue Triangle association’s founding president and current executive director, said a decade-old appraisal estimated the painting’s value at $1.3 million.
Michael Rosenfeld, whose New York City gallery represents the Biggers estate, said the mural is worth even more.
For example, the art dealer said he sold a 2-by-8-foot rendering of the 1958 “Web of Life” mural, which is at TSU, to the Brooklyn Museum in 2011 for “a few hundred thousand” dollars. He estimates a major piece of public art, like the one at the Blue Triangle center, is worth between $2 million and $3 million.
“The value of this work to America is priceless,” he said. “John Biggers is a very important artist. The subject and the narrative of the piece is extraordinary. It depicts the black experience — the good and
the bad.
Biggers created the painting six decades ago when the building was owned by the Blue Triangle YWCA, which served black women and girls for decades in segregated Houston. The work, a commission from a local pastor, became the basis of Biggers’ doctoral dissertation.
Since acquiring the community center in 2000, the Blue Triangle organization has used its shoestring budget to patch the roof, Bryant said. For additional income, the center rents the room with the historic mural.
But more than a decade later, a bandage is now considered poor prevention for a pending disaster.
Now, deeply concerned Blue Triangle supporters fear that water will claim the priceless piece if the resources don’t come through quickly to fix the roof.
“We get just enough to pay our bills. Insurance on the building is almost $20,000 a year, which we pay in installments,” Bryant said. “We don’t have the revenue to do any more than that.”
Waterproof solution
In her book, “Walls That Speak: The Murals of John Thomas Biggers” — published in 2010 — Olive Jensen Theisen included a section on the Blue Triangle center mural and a photo of the first sketch, which was scratched out on an envelope.
“He applied two coats of flat white oil paint directly onto the plastered wall to seal it off, making it less absorbent and creating a white, luminous ground,” she wrote.
Contacted at her Dallas-area home this week, the 84-year-old retired art educator — who has published several books on Biggers’ work and was a friend of the artist — expressed regret that the painting could be in peril.
“Any kind of water damage is going to, oh, just deeply affect that piece. It’s going to destroy it. It’s attached to the wall. Water is going to do what water does — it’s going to flow downwards,” Theisen said. “This mural was a public statement. Out there for public display was a mural of what free women had done to fight this business of slavery.”
She believes an inscription on the wall that calls the piece by a slightly different name — “The Contribution of Negro Woman to American Life and Education” — was added later.
The Blue Triangle building, a state historic landmark registered with the Texas Historical Commission, includes a gymnasium, commercial kitchen, meeting rooms and indoor pool. Association supporters are working to preserve the community center, its programs and the mural.
“Women who are in their retiring years really want to hold on to that history,” said Bryant, an octogenarian and TSU alumna.
A waterproofing solution on the two small roofs that affect the mural would cost $45,000, according to a repair estimate the association received late last year. Another company quoted $205,000 to completely replace the panoply of roofs that cover the entire 10,000-square-foot community center complex.
There has never been a fundraising campaign to fix the roofs or restore the painting, but the urgent need has nudged supporters to begin making appeals.
“To keep the mural safe, I want the roof above it to be soundly repaired — not just patched,” Bryant said.
A national treasure
Michael Rosenfeld Gallery director Halley Harrisburg said the mural could be a strong candidate for the support of foundations and other grant makers. She said any strategic fundraising campaign should have the dual focus of securing the roof and conserving the mural.
“This certainly is a national treasure that needs our serious attention,” she said. “I think that the art world at large would be very, very interested. It’s an extraordinary example of John Biggers’ work and his devotion to making his art and his images accessible to the public. His easel painting, in a sense, suffered because of his commitment to public commissions such as this.”
Jimmy Castillo, the Houston Arts Alliance’s civic art and design collection manager, keeps track of the city’s public art collection — which includes Biggers murals at the Wortham Theater Center downtown and the Houston Public Library branch on Reed Road.
He said the importance of securing the mural cannot be overstated. “Dr. Biggers will never make any more work like that, so as time goes on, they become more rare and more valuable and, if they’re damaged, they become less valuable.”