The University of Oregon Libraries will move forward with plans to cover four racist murals in UO’s Knight Library by October 1.
UO Libraries pledged to cover the murals in a statement on June 22, along with promising reviews of its collections and hiring practices. This summer, UO President Michael Schill and Provost Patrick Phillips asked Mark Watson, interim dean of UO Libraries, to move forward with a plan to cover the murals.
Related: UO Libraries promises to cover racist murals in Knight Library by October 1
The university’s first priority would be removing the murals from the Knight Library, a location that tries to be one of the most inclusive places on campus, according to Phillips. However, the murals cannot be removed without risking damage to them, he said.
“You can choose where it’s appropriate to display art, but there’s really no reason to destroy pieces of art,” Phillips said. “They exist within their own historical context. Sometimes that’s not a context that we want to celebrate or enjoy, but that is the trace of human culture.”
The covering, costing $31,940, according to Around the O, will be a removable, tamper-free aluminum panel adorned with a photo of Minnesota Kasota limestone walls to blend into the stairwell walls. The panel is part of a “multiphased plan,” Watson said in an Around the O article, as a permanent replacement for the murals will require more input and representation from around campus.
“We don’t know what happens next exactly, we just wanted to move forward with this action,” Phillips said. “Obviously there’s a lot of other things going on at the university right now that are high priorities, especially making sure that all our faculty, students and staff are safe and secure during the COVID crisis.”
The four murals being covered — “Development of the Arts,” “Development of the Sciences,” “Mission of a University” and “Opportunity for the Youth of Oregon” — have long created controversy in the UO community.
Students created a petition in 2017 to take one of the murals down. Both the murals and the Knight Library have been vandalized in protest, including on June 30 in the wake of national conversations and protests of racial injustice, following the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police.
In normal circumstances, Phillips said, the university would seek to find a permanent solution for the murals starting this fall, but the timeframe now will likely begin in a year, due to COVID-19 complications. When the time does come, he said, the university plans to seek more input from the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, the Associated Students of the University of Oregon, students of color groups and other student stakeholders at UO.
“We recognize the importance of creating an environment that, particularly for our students, is seen as welcoming to them,” Phillips said. “We also recognize that this is a question that’s being called for society as a whole, what that means and not to just ignore these problems but to take them head on.”
The university is also considering actions such as adding informational plaques at locations on campus with controversial histories, such as University Hall, which was recently denamed from Deady Hall.
“I think you’ll see many other actions of the next few months,” Phillips said, “where we’ll be moving forward in this way.”
