Wendell Berry’s Peculiar Patriotism – The Bulwark

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National and history of bias
by Wendell Berry
Shoemaker & Co. 513 pages, $24

meIn 1934, Kentucky-born artist Ann Rice O’Hanlon created a mural on a wall in the lobby of the University of Kentucky’s Memorial Auditorium, a church-like structure completed five years earlier as a tribute to the Bluegrass State soldiers who died in World War I. Commissioned through a public artwork project, the New Deal Program, O’Hanlon’s mural did not depict a sterilized history of Kentucky, but included skirmishes between settlers and Native Americans, as well as depictions of enslaved African Americans working in the fields and others playing music to white dancers.

The mural has always been remarkable, drawing both praise for its originality and criticism for its ethnic imagery. In 2015, the university’s president, Eli Capilotto, in response to black student leaders expressing opposition to the murals, chose to block them. Since then, the university has wavered in its approach to the murals. In 2017, the mural was unveiled and explanatory signs installed. Next year university commissioned by Trinidadian-born artist Karen Olivier to create companion artwork titled witnessnext to the mural. Painted by Oliver in the dome of Memorial Hall Words by Frederick DouglassThere is no man under heaven who does not know that slavery is wrong for him. “

After the mural was shrouded …