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New group seeks to save art in Portland schools

By Jennifer Anderson

The Portland Tribune, Dec 3, 2007, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (8 Reader comments)

CouRTESY OF Portland Public Schools

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A new nonprofit organization on Monday launched to preserve art in Portland Public Schools. Not in the form of teachers, but literally the art on the walls.

Friends of Art in the Schools, a group of parents, art historians, educators and conservators, aims to preserve the historic works many local school buildings were decorated with in the early 20th century as part of the Works Progress Administration, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s initiative to create jobs for artists during the Great Depression.

Many of the murals were painted over at some point and forgotten, only to be rediscovered recently, in need of repair and preservation.

At Southeast Portland’s Abernethy School, for example, a square-foot piece of a larger mural painted in 1939 was recently discovered, having been covered with five layers of paint.

It’s called “A Pageant of Oregon History,” painted by artist Erich Lamade as part of the W.P.A. and depicting scenes from the lives of Native Americans.

Similar works have been found at Beach, Chapman and Irvington schools, as well as Jefferson and Grant high schools. The new group seeks to locate, identify, preserve and better display the historic artworks in Portland’s public school buildings.

Ginny Allen, who coauthored a book on Oregon painters and helped inventory the works in the schools, said there are murals as well as statues, sculptures, wood marketry, glass mosaics and a collection of prints and lithographs.

“The collection is remarkable,” she said. “There’s so much of this W.P.A. art; it’s really such a special category ... there’s lots of reasons for us to not let that resource be destroyed or lost.”

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Reader comments

Re: New group seeks to save art in Portland schools

Superb idea !

Who is the contact person?

Is it Ginny Allen?

It would be really great

if great stories like this

would always share the person

spearheading this endeavor

along with the phone #,

email and website address.

Thanks very much for running this story.

Most sincerely,

Karen Karlsson

www.graffitifineart.com

karlsson97211@yahoo.com

503-281-5083

"Karen Karlsson"

(email verified)

Mon, Dec 03, 2007 at 04:14 AM

Re: New group seeks to save art in Portland schools

F.D.R. was reviled by policitcal foes at the time these works of art were made, for being a socialist, due to the fact that tax dollars were spent on these and other public projects. Yet the Hoover dam and the TVA were also part of this socialized inferstructure he championed. An inferstructure our nation used to defeat the Axis powers and later to win the cold war.

If those critics had prevaled, what sort of world we have today?

These works of art are a reminder of the foresight and organizational skills of the Roosevelt administration.

F.D.R. was not the first leader to incorporate socialized systems to our republic, in order to get really big projects done, nor will he be the last. Socialized medicine is in the election news at this time, so these murals continue to show us what can be done if we can set aside our empty political retoric and work together for the good of our fellow americans.

"Dennis"

(email verified)

Mon, Dec 03, 2007 at 05:07 AM

Re: New group seeks to save art in Portland schools

Oh my...predicting the successful implementation of "Socialized medicine" based on the FDR's having some art painted on school walls 60 years ago.

"racquel"

(email verified)

Mon, Dec 03, 2007 at 08:10 AM

Re: New group seeks to save art in Portland schools

The WPA was a good idea for its time. Although it was roundly criticized as "make work". It served its purpose both in getting projects accomplished and keeping the "work ethic" alive during stressful economic times.

A lot of public art is offensive crap. Look at the anti-Semitic propaganda art to come out of Nazi Germany and the pictures of horse-faced women pulling plows from another Soviet 5-year plan. But if that old public art can be salvaged, it would certainly be worth the effort, in my humble opinion.

"Don the Historian"

(email verified)

Mon, Dec 03, 2007 at 02:38 PM

Re: New group seeks to save art in Portland schools

Let's auction the art off and sell lithograph copies of it to the public! Create an endowment and use half the proceeds from interest generated from the investment to fund History, Music, Shop Classes, Maintenance and Art in the Schools. We could use the other half to reinvest in the investment fund to perpetuate it. It does little to advance the education of our children to have valuable art displayed in facilities with limited public access.