Putting ‘offensive art’ in context is better than painting over uncomfortable past

Readers may be interested in the latest furore over political correctness, this time in what is perhaps the world’s most tolerant city, San Francisco.

The Ukrainian-american artist Victor Arnautoff , in the 1930s, was commissioned to paint a multi-panelled mural for the George Washington High School, depicting scenes from the life of America’s founding president.

One of the mural panels depicts the conquest of the West. Pioneers step over the body of a dead Native American. The said pioneers are depicted in grisaille, an unpleasant grey-scale, to indicate the progressively minded artist’s disapproval of the way they treated the indigenous inhabitants of the continent. However, Native American objectors have communicated to the San Francisco Unified School District’s Board of Education their demand that all 13 of the mural panels be painted over, because of their racist messaging, and the request is being taken seriously.

The situation is reminiscent of the 1989 scandal over the Heart of Africa exhibition at the Royal Ontario Museum, Ontario. The depiction of a British redcoat spearing a Zulu warrior was meant to be a condemnation, but was taken to be an affront to the black citizens of Toronto. The curator of the exhibition was driven into exile in edinburgh, though she has now been able to return to Canada.

What should be done in such circumstances? Former communist nations have simply put all those statues of Marx into junkyards.

But there is another solution. Outside Brussels, the Africa museum that once glorified King Leopold’s depredations in the Congo has now relabelled the exhibits, showing what Belgians once thought, and how they might reconsider.

Relabeling is an educational process in itself, and should replace wanton destruction.

RHODRI JEFFREYS-JONES Merchiston Gardens, Edinburgh