Wendell Berry lawsuit, Black artist try to save scorned University of Kentucky mural
The University of Kentucky should halt the removal of a controversial 1930s-era mural that has been at the center of years of race-related, on-campus debate, argued a lawsuit from a prominent Kentucky writer and a letter from a contemporary Black artist.
The National Coalition Against Censorship and Karyn Olivier — the artist who created a 2018 piece meant to contextualize the mural — say that the university shouldn’t get rid of the Ann Rice O’Hanlon piece that depicts Black workers, possibly slaves, because the mural’s removal would mute Olivier’s accompanying piece “Witness.”
Additionally, a complaint has been filed by renowned Kentucky poet and novelist Wendell Berry and his wife, Tanya, in Franklin County Circuit Court against UK and President Eli Capilouto, according to an attorney in the case. The complaint includes a request for an injunction to halt the removal or damage of the O’Hanlon mural or the “Witness” installation by Olivier.
Olivier is not a party in the lawsuit.
“The university’s decision to remove the O’Hanlon mural also renders my work Witness blind and mute,” said Olivier in a press release. “It cannot exist without the past it sought to confront. And it is ironic that the decision to censor the original artwork has, in one fell swoop, censored my installation, too.”
After years of protest and heated discussion about the mural, Capilouto wrote in a campuswide email in early June that he was ordering the removal of the mural. The decision followed the police killings of Breonna Taylor in Louisville and George Floyd in Minneapolis and ensuing local and national protests calling for an end to police violence against people of color.
In a statement, UK spokesperson Jay Blanton wrote Monday that removing the mural from Memorial Hall provides a space for healing.
“Our respect for Wendell Berry is deep and abiding,” Blanton said. “His contributions to our state and literature are profound. Moving art, however, is not erasing history. It is, rather, creating context to further dialogue as well as space for healing. As President Capilouto wrote to our campus last month, after years of community conversation, ‘our efforts and solutions with the mural, for many of our students, have been a roadblock to reconciliation, rather than a path toward healing. That’s not a criticism. It is a statement of fact and, I hope, understanding. We need to move forward.’”
Black student groups at the university for years demanded the removal of the mural from the lobby of the classroom building that used to house many mandatory general education classes.
Since its initial announcement, the university has not released more details about how the mural will be removed.
Tanya Berry explains why aunt depicted Black people as she did
Wendell and Tanya Berry’s complaint was provided to the Herald-Leader by attorney Scott White, who is representing the Berrys. Tanya Berry is the maternal niece of O’Hanlon, the artist of the original mural, according to the lawsuit.
Berry felt he had no other choice but to file the lawsuit to halt the removal, White said.
The lawsuit argues that the mural is part of the lobby walls and that it cannot be removed without removing the wall itself.
The mural is historically significant and unique as a fresco that was painted on wet plaster, Tanya Berry said. O’Hanlon, who was in her 20s, researched, designed and painted the mural over eight months.
Berry said she remembers her aunt as being a very liberal person, and she painted the Black people in the center of the artwork very intentionally. They were central to the region’s history and needed to be included, Berry said.
The way the Black people were depicted was also intentional, Berry said. They are shown in a field with Central Kentucky on their backs because “it’s on their backs that the whole of society was built,” she said.
Wendell Berry said that the fresco is part of the Commonwealth of Kentucky and has been entrusted to the university, and that it should not be the right of one university official to decide to destroy it. He also said that, as an artist, he is concerned that destroying the fresco and the statements it makes is an encroachment on freedom.
Wendell Berry: Slavery is hurtful, but shouldn’t be hidden
“The presence of slavery in Kentucky’s history is hurtful to us all,” Wendell Berry said. “I think that any white person involved in the history of Kentucky, as I am, could plead that it’s embarrassing, I could plead that it’s embarrassing to me that it exists … I think it’s important instead of ignoring that history or hiding it, we should take it as an instruction or an imperative to confront the problems that come out of that history, that’s what our duty is.”
The personal significance of the mural to Berry’s family also played a role in their involvement.
“I have a debt there also, for two years we lived on their place and I learned a lot from Aunt O’Hanlon about art and about other things,” Wendell Berry said. “I’m their debtor and there’s nobody left but my wife and me to protect their work.”
The university is using the mural removal as an “easy” way to address calls for racial justice, White said.
“It was so clearly a knee jerk reaction to the very real and worthwhile protests that are going on,” White said. “Certainly we and Mr. Berry believe those protests are important and need to be addressed.”
Adding Olivier’s piece to engage with the O’Hanlon mural was an important step in adding context and creating a meaningful dialogue, but it was only the first step, White said. The university stopped there instead of working to make it a place professors and educators could use to confront the issues raised in the mural and Olivier’s work.
“We hope the university will listen to people like Karyn Olivier and Wendell Berry... and reverse itself and really put a lot of energy behind how this Memorial Hall space can be used to seriously address these issues that Black Lives Matter has so poignantly raised up,” White said.
Removing the O’Hanlon mural would destroy two pieces of art and doesn’t address the real issues of racial justice, White said.
“I think we all get that the Black students at UK are hurt by this mural, and while we empathize with their demands, it takes mature and thoughtful leadership of the university to say yes we understand that, but no we’re going to address it in this way,” White said. “Rather than taking it down, we’re going to use it with this amazing contemporary piece that celebrates Black lives and addresses the original mural, we’re going to use this space to deal with those issues.”
Spaces that address racial injustice are often uncomfortable, but it’s important to remember, White said. Specifically, he recalled the national lynching memorial in Alabama and the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis. If given the time and resources, the space in Memorial Hall could have a similar impact, he said.
Because of the context and dialogue the Memorial Hall space tries to create, it cannot be compared to something like a confederate monument, White said. Confederate monuments have been removed from public spaces in Kentucky and elsewhere.
From a practical standpoint, moving the mural would be extremely difficult and expensive, White said. Even a group experienced in removing a fresco on plaster could not guarantee that it would not crumble, and the price tag could be millions of dollars, he said.
Black artist says UK hung her work ‘out to dry’
Olivier, a Trinidad-born, Philadelphia-based artist known for her large works that play off public spaces was commissioned by the university to create the contextualizing piece in the same building. Her artwork involved elevating many of the figures in the mural to the top of a golden dome.
“My work replicated the black and brown figures depicted in the mural, positioning them against a gilded background on the dome; without the context of surrounding whiteness, the figures took on new meanings,” Olivier wrote in an op-ed published Monday in the Washington Post. “Witness” was not created to “to magically dispel or absolve the University of Kentucky from embedded, institutional white supremacy or oppression,” Olivier wrote.
Olivier said in a phone interview Monday that she was not notified before the university made the decision to remove the mural. She subsequently exchanged letters with the university. Olivier said President Capilouto wrote that plans to move the mural create “profound questions” for her work and invited her to be a part of the process of trying to determine what to do next with the space.
The university’s decision to move the mural “hung my piece out to dry,” Olivier said. Her work can’t exist without the mural, adding that she often makes pieces of art that “collapses and intersects multiple histories with present-day narratives, knowing that those present-day narratives shift.”
Instead of removing the mural, Olivier said the university should have developed a long-term plan to combat systemic racism on campus in 2018, and it should investigate on-campus racism.
In April 2019, almost nine months after “Witness” was completed, student activists occupied the university’s main administrative building for a day to demand greater rights for students of color and once again ask for the removal of the mural.
During those protests, Olivier wrote a letter to UK’s students of color that explained her thinking behind her contextualizing work and the mural.
Tsage Douglas, the chairwoman of the Black Student Advisory Council — the Black student group which headed those 2019 protests — wrote in an op-ed in the Herald-Leader that Olivier’s artwork “enraged” students of color.
“Gold leaf to remind us of the opulence of the Byzantine church. Gold stolen from our native lands,” Douglas wrote in 2019. “Besides that, we should discuss the Black church in general. What historically Black church or Native American sacred site has gold leaf? When have we ever been able to afford gold-encrusted churches in this land? What message do the smiles of those subjugated send? That only in death can we be happy, now ascended to heaven?”
If the O’Hanlon mural was destroyed, Douglas wrote, that “will allow students to heal from it. Now, we will do the work that has needed to be done for decades.”
This story was originally published July 6, 2020 at 12:38 PM.