Racist murals covered up in U of O library

“In a move to acknowledge conversations about anti-racism taking place around the world amid the Black Lives Matter movement, the University of Oregon has ordered four murals in the Knight Library that contain racist, exclusionary language and imagery to be covered," a statement reads on the U of O website.

The four murals have been located in the Knight Library since the building's construction in 1937. All are affixed to the walls, so the university has stated that they cannot be removed without the building’s stability being at risk. Instead, the murals have been securely covered. The school will pay an estimated $32,000 in total to cover the murals. The idea of covering the murals has been around for years. In 2017, there was a petition to remove one of the murals, The Mission of a University. The petition gained over 1,000 signatures. The only outcome was that university officials hosted a series of discussions about art and cultural memory. Most students at the University of Oregon have an opinion on the murals because they face the heavily trafficked east and west stairwells.

"Upon reading this mural, I immediately felt unwelcome and disconnected from a sense of fellowship and safety in the space meant for learning," the 2017 petition states.

The three most controversial murals are The Mission of a University, Development of the Arts, and Development of the Sciences. Both of the development murals are four feet by 12 feet, extending from floor to ceiling. The Mission of a University mural was designed by art professor N. B. Zane, who used a speech written by former university professor and dean Frederick Young as text when Young gave the speech to a University assembly in 1909. The Mission of a University mural refers to the “conservation and betterment” of the school’s “racial heritage,” a reference to the nearly-all white student body in 1909. This mural has been vandalized multiple times, as recent as June of 2020. The two others, Development of the Arts and Development of the Sciences, depict the evolution of humanity. The murals were created by Albert Runquist and his brother Arthur in February of 1836. In each mural, there are dozens of people standing under tree branches. The lower branches depict seemingly primitive indigenous peoples using less-advanced tools, painting on cave walls, and sewing. At the tops of both murals’ trees are depicted white scholars and colonizers using advanced equipment while working with math or written text. The two “Development” murals appear to be drawing stark and insulting distinctions between the white settlers and the indigenous people.

“[Covering these murals] is something that is long overdue,” said Provost and Senior Vice President Patric Phillips. “This is a historic time in our country, and we need to listen to members of our community who have felt the hurt and sting of racism on our campus. I am firmly against the destruction or censoring of art in any form, but it would be disingenuous for anyone to say that these pieces, especially in a library whose central mission is to welcome and support the entire campus, are ‘just art.’ They represent much more and it is incumbent upon us to address that fact. This action allows the pieces themselves to be preserved, and help us to look toward a new future of representation within these specific spaces.”