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The University of Oregon has ordered the covering up for four murals in the Knight Library that it says feature racist, exclusionary language and imagery. Oregon said the murals, which date to the library’s construction in 1937, cannot be removed without risking significant damage to the artwork and building.
Oregon said in a statement announcing its decision last week that one of the murals “references the ‘conservation … of our racial heritage,’ referring to white people.”
“Two others, called ‘Development of the Arts’ and ‘Development of the Sciences,’ show dozens of human figures engaged in art and science,” according to the university statement. "Primitive-looking indigenous people are pictured at the bottom, using early tools and equipment. At the top, exclusively white scholars are shown in a variety of fields doing their work.”
Oregon previously decided, in 2017, to keep the murals, determining that it had a stake in conserving them as artifacts of the university's history. Oregon’s provost and senior vice president, Patrick C. Phillips, described the reversal as “long overdue.”
“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,’” he said. “They represent much more and it is incumbent upon us to address that fact. This action allows the pieces themselves to be preserved and helps us to look toward a new future of representation within these specific spaces.”
