What should be done with all the public spaces created by the removal of the Confederate memorials? The only thing that makes any sense is to fill them with public art. And the art should be created by Black artists.
I would advocate for creating a program modeled after the Works Progress Administration of the New Deal. Public funds could be set aside for the commission of art by Black artists to fill the spaces vacated by their ancestor’s oppressors. What better way to open the dialogue toward justice, equality and peace through art.
I know what you’re thinking. Isn’t that a form of discrimination? Yes, but there is a compelling state interest in benefiting a community that has been traditionally left out, marginalized and grievously exploited for generations.
A perfect example of public art created by a Black artist is located on the grounds of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond. On Dec. 10, 2019, the museum unveiled Rumors of War by Kehinde Wiley. Wiley, born in 1977 in Los Angeles, has risen in the art world as a prominent portrait painter, his most famous commission being the portraits of Barack and Michelle Obama. While he was visiting Richmond, Virginia in 2016 to attend the opening of his retrospective exhibition, Kehinde Wiley: A New Republic, at the VMFA, he was struck by the number of Confederate statues on Monument Avenue and conceived the idea for Rumors of War.
In describing his piece, Wiley is quoted as saying: “In these toxic times art can help us transform and give us a sense of purpose. This story begins with my seeing the Confederate monuments. What does it feel like if you are Black and walking beneath this? We come from a beautiful, fractured situation. Let’s take these fractured pieces and put them back together.”
His answer was to replicate the J.E.B. Stuart Monument with a Black rider in place of the confederate general. The horse strikes the exact same pose and the rider, who is dressed in a hoodie, jeans (with a hole in the knee), and sneakers, with dreadlocks, strikes the same pose at Stuart. It is a tour de force standing 27 feet tall on top of a stone pedestal situated on the grounds of the VMFA just one mile away from the Stuart Monument. One cannot miss it as they drive or walk down the boulevard.
According to the VMFA website, “Wiley’s career has focused on addressing and remedying the absence of black and brown men and women in our visual, historical, and cultural narratives.” This statement supports my argument that only Black artists should be paid to fill in the spaces vacated by the vanquished Confederate monuments. Not to mention the fact that there is a history of depriving Black children from equal access to arts education. I know this because when my father, Thomas C. Colt, Jr., was the director of the VMFA from 1935-1948, he and one of his Board Trustees, John Lee Pratt, created an Artist Fellowship Program which gave grants to three young artists to pay for their art education. One of the Fellowships required the recipient to teach art to Black children in Richmond.
My father had surveyed the access to art education in the public schools, which were segregated of course. What he found was that the white children started art classes in elementary school and had ready access to them all the way through college. That was not the case for Black children. So they were intent on breaching the divide.
I found the most astonishing letter from one of the board members of the museum who suggested that my father and Mr. Pratt were wasting their time and money because “the negro talent to date is almost nil” and “from my viewpoint it is a very serious question whether we are injuring the negro by giving him the training in the fine arts.” Letter dated July 30, 1940 from Mrs. Alfred I. DuPont to Thomas C. Colt, Library of Virginia Archives.
Fortunately, my father and Mr. Pratt went ahead with the plan and a white artist (of course), Julian Binford, started teaching art classes at Craig House Art Center, which had been opened in 1938 with funds from the WPA and, at the time, was the only center trying to improve access to art instruction for Blacks in Richmond.
It is heartening to see that the VMFA has continued my father’s and Mr. Pratt’s legacy and has supported African American artists like Kehinde Wiley, who have a unique perspective on redefining history to include the Black struggle and expose the white supremacy that still exists today. Let’s help to finish bridging the divide.
(Susannah Colt lives in Whitefield.)