An art-rocity
Famed 1940 mural painted-over at DeWitt Clinton HS
THEY DON’T just teach history at Dewitt Clinton High School — they cover it up too.
School officials wrecked a beautiful New Deal-era mural at the storied Bronx high school by slathering a coat of high-gloss, cotton-candy blue paint over it.
“Constellations” by Germanborn painter Alfred Floegel was installed on the ceiling outside DeWitt Clinton’s library in 1940. It depicted the stars in the heavens alongside another large-scale Floegel mural called “History of the World.”
The paintings, deemed Floegel’s masterpieces, were both used in history lessons. They also appear in the Department of Education’s online art collection, “Public Art for Public Schools.”
“It is a kind of Sistine Chapel of New Deal artworks,” wrote Richard Walker, a University of California/Berkeley professor who directs the Living New Deal project, which aims to preserve New Deal-era artworks.
Floegel, who was born in 1894 and died in 1976, worked on the paintings for six years, Walker wrote in 2015 on his project’s website. At the time, he was teaching night courses at DeWitt Clinton, school staffers said.
Half of his masterpiece disappeared in November, when, according to school staffers, construction workers painted over the ceiling mural to spruce up for a visit by then-schools chancellor Carmen Fariña. Fariña never made the visit. Education Department officials tell a different story — they say the painting was covered over as workers repaired damage to the building.
Whatever the reason, the loss of the mural stunned students and educators.
“It’s messed up. Obviously there was a meaning for it to be painted,” said 10thgrader Leolanie Bonilla, 16. “No one values art like that no more.”
Staffers said the murals were refurbished in the 1990s and that Floegel’s son Alfred Jr. visited the murals and met with former DeWitt Clinton principal Santiago Taveras a few years ago on a tour of his father’s work.
City Education Department spokesman Doug Cohen said the city is seeking ways to recover the mural.
Cohen said he couldn’t estimate the mural’s value.
Manhattan appraiser Bonnie Kagan said that appraising such a rare work would be difficult. “You’d have to see what it would cost to replace the mural with something similar today,” Kagan said.