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Educational Council in San Francisco has taken a decision to paint down thirteen murals of the Russian émigré artist
Victor Arnautoff, painted in 1930s at the George Washington High School in San Francisco. Advocates of minority rights are fighting for several dozens years to paint over the artworks because they are “humiliatiung for some community members,”
Forum Daily reports.
As Russkiy Mir
reported earlier, The Coordinating Council of Russian Compatriots have published a petition against the destruction of the frescoes. Representatives of the Russian community use the documents to prove that the frescoes were created with quite the opposite goal - to draw people's attention to the dark pages of US history.
The current eliminating frescoes campaign was launched by Indians movement activists. They argue that the US history is claim that IS history is shown in one-sided manner, from colonisators' point of view. Meanwhile, the authors of the petition cite facts from the artist’s published biography to prove that he did not mean to humiliate certain groups of American society. The study of Professor Robert Chernuy clearly states that the Russian artist depicted scenes of oppression of people with dark skin color in order to condemn slavery and other manifestations of injustice that were part of the state ideology of the times of President George Washington.
Victor Arnautoff openly protested against the genocide of the Indians and African Americans and sought to draw the attention of contemporaries to the manifestation of discrimination against "color" Americans at that time. The authors of the petition call the frescoes of Arnautoff “a critically important educational tool” and urge like-minded people to sign the petition.
Russky Mir
