Notre Dame University Will Cover Controversial Columbus Murals
Quote:
For more than 130 years, 12 towering murals depicting Christopher Columbus’ voyage to the Americas have flanked a hallway in the University of Notre Dame’s Main Building. But late last week, the university announced that it plans to cover the murals; in a letter explaining the decision, Notre Dame’s president described the artworks as memorializing “a catastrophe” for indigenous peoples.
Painted between 1882 and 1884 by the Italian artist Luigi Gregori, the murals were intended to encourage Notre Dame’s largely immigrant Catholic population, according to university president Reverend John Jenkins, made at a time when anti-Catholic sentiments ran high in America, a land settled by Protestants. Much of the university community had “encountered significant anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant attitudes in American public life,” Jenkins wrote in his letter.
“Gregori’s murals focused on the popular image of Columbus as an American hero, who was also an immigrant and a devout Catholic. The message to the Notre Dame community was that they too, though largely immigrants and Catholics, could be fully and proudly American,” he added.
But in recent years, the sentiment around the murals has shifted, as critics point to the disastrous impact of Columbus’ explorations on native peoples. Columbus and his men inflicted brutal treatment on the indigenous populations they encountered, enslaving them and ruthlessly suppressing revolts. Columbus also ushered in a new era of European colonization that proved devastating to many cultures. Since 1995, Notre Dame has offered brochures that offer a more complete historical context for the murals, but Jenkins acknowledged in his letter that the Main Building hallway is a busy campus thoroughfare and “not well suited for a thoughtful consideration of these paintings and the context of their composition.”
In 2017, more than 300 Notre Dame students, employees and alumni signed an open letter calling for the removal of the murals. “The Native persons are depicted as stereotypes, their destruction is gilded over and their slavery is celebrated,” the letter said of the artworks, adding that the murals’ presence in the Main Building “mocks every attempt to make campus more inclusive, more diverse and more culturally sensitive.”
After the open letter was published in 2017, a spokesman said the university had no plans to remove the murals, which are frescoes painted directly onto the wall. “To try to remove them would in all likelihood destroy them,” spokesman Dennis Brown told the Indy Star at the time.
In the months since, the university came up with its alternative plan. According Jenkins’ letter, the murals will soon be covered with a “woven material consistent with the décor” of the Main Building. High resolution images of the artworks will be displayed in a location on campus, as yet to be determined, that is more conducive to “informed and careful consideration.”
“Our goal in making this change is to respect both Gregori’s murals, understood in their historical context, and the reality and experience of Native Americans in the aftermath of Columbus’s arrival,” Jenkins wrote. “We wish to preserve artistic works originally intended to celebrate immigrant Catholics who were marginalized at the time in society, but do so in a way that avoids unintentionally marginalizing others.”
I don’t understand, if the murals are offensive why would a image of the murals not be offensive?
Notre Dame Refuses to Revoke Honor of McCarrick — For NowQuote:
Last week, the Catholic University of America withdrew the honorary degree it had awarded to Archbishop Theodore McCarrick over a decade earlier. Fordham University had done the same earlier.
In light of the very serious allegations that he abused an underage altar boy and the fact that the charges were found “credible and substantiated” by the Archdiocese of New York and Pope Francis had asked for his resignation, it is clear that this is the correct move. But it was announced yesterday that the University of Notre Dame will NOT revoke the honorary degree it awarded him -at least not yet.
“The only honorary degree that the University of Notre Dame has rescinded was that of Bill Cosby, and this action was taken only after judicial proceedings in criminal court concluded with a guilty verdict. Recently, serious allegations of sexual abuse by Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, a 2008 honorary degree recipient, were found ‘credible and substantiated’ by a review board of the New York Archdiocese. Pope Francis subsequently asked for McCarrick’s resignation from the cardinalate, suspended him from public ministry and ordered him to live a life of prayer and penance until a canonical trial, at which McCarrick has a right to be heard, is concluded.
“While the University finds the alleged actions reprehensible and has no reason to question the review board’s findings, it recognizes that McCarrick maintains his innocence and that a final decision in the case will come only after a canonical trial in Rome. As in the case of Bill Cosby, we will wait until that trial is concluded to take action regarding McCarrick’s honorary degree. We strongly urge those involved in this trial to reach a conclusion as expeditiously as possible. “While the allegations in this case are most grave, as they were in the case of Bill Cosby, we believe it respects not only the rights of those involved but also the adjudicatory process itself to allow that process to reach a conclusion before taking action.
_________________
Professionally Identified and joined WP August 26, 2013
DSM 5: Autism Spectrum Disorder, DSM IV: Aspergers Moderate Severity
“My autism is not a superpower. It also isn’t some kind of god-forsaken, endless fountain of suffering inflicted on my family. It’s just part of who I am as a person”. - Sara Luterman
27 Jan 2019, 11:32 pm
