What the U. of Kentucky Did About a Controversial Campus Fresco Depicting Slavery

A new art installation at the University of Kentucky will coat the ceiling of a campus building in gold. Beyond its beauty, the artwork aims to address issues of race and equity, and to respond to a controversial fresco just feet away.

The piece, created by the Philadelphia-based artist Karyn Olivier, reacts to an 84-year-old fresco that some community members said depicts people of color in problematic ways. Olivier’s work is now being installed and is expected to be completed by Thursday, said Stuart Horodner, director of the university’s art museum.

Kentucky is hardly alone among universities that have faced controversy over artworks, monuments, or buildings whose imagery or whose honorees are dated or even offensive, while they have remained elements of campus life. Like some universities that have brought provocative art to their campuses and then padded it with educational context, Kentucky chose to add explanatory signage around the existing mural. But it also chose to commission another piece — Olivier’s work — to further the conversation.

Still, it took a while for the university to decide on that approach. In 2015 a group of student activists met with Eli Capilouto, the university’s president, to voice concerns about the experience of minorities on the campus. Part of that conversation touched on a 40-foot-long fresco in Memorial Hall, a central building. Painted in 1934 by Ann Rice O’Hanlon, the fresco seeks to depict Kentucky’s historical “progress.” It features images of black slaves tending crops and a Native American holding a hatchet, among other scenes.

The university then covered the mural with a large sheet, sparking a letter from some faculty members in African-American studies denouncing the “closed door” nature of the decision and enumerating how Kentucky could improve minorities’ experience.

The university formed a committee to recommend next steps. The shrouding, which lasted over a year, was a kind of “time out” that allowed the conversation to continue without causing further offense, said Horodner, who was involved in the process.

Nicole Thorne Jenkins, a professor of accounting and executive associate dean for administration, faculty, and research, said many plans were considered as the committee tried to find an “appropriate response.”

“On one hand, there are many people who find it problematic,” said Jenkins, who signed the faculty letter and served on the committee. “On the other hand, it is a piece of art, it’s from a historical time, it’s unique, there’s nothing else like it. So trying to balance those things in a way that honors what we’re trying to do at a university, which is to teach and be reflective, but at the same time providing a welcoming and comforting space for students, because students take classes in that building.”

Censorship Not an Option

Commissioning a response artwork and increasing context turned out to be the most viable responses, Horodner said.

Painting over the fresco was not an option: “You certainly don’t want to consider censoring or destroying artworks,” he said.

The university wanted to provide a counterbalance or response to the mural, Horodner said. “And in a way, what better way to do it than to do it with another artwork?”

Once the committee decided to commission a response piece, a smaller group, including both Jenkins and Horodner, convened. The university also expanded signs around the original work, to provide information on O’Hanlon, the fresco, and its historical context.

The response piece was to be installed in a vestibule at the entrance of the building, right before the room that houses O’Hanlon’s mural.

The new committee issued an open call to artists for submissions and, when that failed to yield compelling ideas, directly appealed to Olivier, who is an associate professor of sculpture at Temple University, and another artist. After a campus visit and additional time to refine their proposals, Olivier’s project was selected.

Olivier’s work covers the vestibule’s domed ceiling in gold leaf. Black and Native American figures from O’Hanlon’s work are superimposed on the gold. A quotation from Frederick Douglass runs around the edge of the area, and four portraits of influential black and Native American Kentuckians will hang near the dome.

For Jenkins, the superimposition of the figures on the ceiling speaks to the true value of their lives.

She said she hasn’t heard much disagreement over what the university chose to do, but she knows people will always have “complicated responses” to the the original fresco.

“What the university has done in terms of improving the signage and the responsive art is, in some way, providing some space and opportunity for greater reflection and greater interpretation,” Jenkins said. And because the new work is in large part on the ceiling, she said, it requires viewers to “look up and, just through the physical act of looking up and seeing what’s there with the gold leafing, almost provide some relief from the mural.”

Horodner said he hoped Olivier’s piece prompts “thoughtful bodies to stop.”

“Karyn’s work was not going to solve the trouble of the mural. Her work was not going to solve racial, historical, identity-based concerns and complexities,” he said. “It hopefully adds another clarifying, questioning, thoughtful moment in the evolution of these discussions. That’s about as much as we could have hoped for.”

Follow Claire Hansen on Twitter at @clairechansen, or email her at claire.hansen@chronicle.com.

Correction (8/15/2018, 11:15 a.m.): The artist’s name is Ann Rice O’Hanlon, not Ann Rick O’Hanlon. The text has been corrected accordingly.