Staff Editorial

Art important for more reasons than aesthetics

We’ve all heard about the sale of KTRU by now — as well as the protests against it — but it’s not the only “destruction of art” in town that’s being objected against.

On Sept. 6, the Houston Chronicle’s Sarah Raslan reported that two murals at Texas Southern University were “ordered destroyed by school President John Rudley, who disagreed with the university museum director’s opinion that the artworks’ historical significance made them worth saving.”

The murals were painted by Harvey Johnson, a former professor at TSU who retired in 2007. Johnson painted them to satisfy his senior graduation requirement. Mothers of “the Father and the Son,” a painting of four women symbolizing earth, wind, fire and water, was described by Johnson as a show of how important women are in our society.

“I tried to show the importance of mothers because men have not given women their rightful place in society,” Johnson told the Chronicle. “Man’s ego and greed, which have gotten him in trouble, make him think that he’s superior when he’s really not. He’s really at the bottom of the tree of life.”

An official statement by TSU said that the murals were painted over by mistake, but President John Rudley has been quoted saying that “all art isn’t good art,” and it seems obvious that it was no accident.

“When I bring dignitaries to campus, I can’t have them seeing that kind of thing,” Rudley told the Chronicle.

And the students aren’t happy.

Via Facebook, students have rallied together to protest the destruction of the murals and plan to provide a place for students to voice their dissent with the school’s decision (or accident, whatever it was).

The group is only 365 strong as of last night, but even the Chronicle’s editorial board has stated its displeasure with the whitewashing of the walls.

“By erasing Johnson’s mural, TSU erased an important part of its own heritage — and its students’ heritage, and its city’s. Maybe the paintings made the president and the dignitaries who visited him uncomfortable. But art, like education, isn’t about making people comfortable. Sometimes we all need to read the handwriting on the wall.”

We couldn’t have said it better.

Leave a Comment