The mural inside City Hall will remain but officials have approved plans to eventually install new artwork in the lobby and expanded signage addressing the controversy around the Stanton Macdonald-Wright image.
After some lengthy discussion, Council voted unanimously to Direct City staff to begin the implementation phase of the Reframe: City Hall Mural project, starting with planning for 10 recommendations included in the report.
The murals concerned are a pair of 1939 Stanton Macdonald Wright paintings that hang on the walls either side of the main doors of Santa Monica City Hall. Less than a decade ago, they became the subject of controversy due to the interpreted depiction of native Americans and the framing of Santa Monica’s history.
One displays the first contact between the Europeans and native Tongva, while the other shows popular activities from the City’s past including polo, tennis, auto races, aviation and sailing. Discussions regarding how best to proceed with this issue go back as far as May 2021, when the report presented to Council on Tuesday was originally commissioned.
“It’s thick and comprehensive,” said Sofia Klatzker, Cultural Affairs Manager, City of Santa Monica as she added that it was 106 pages long.
“The culminating report before you is the documentation of this community process, an investigation into the complex history of how the mural came to be and how perceptions and attitudes have changed in the intervening years,” Klatzker said.
The report itself was undertaken by Meztli Projects, an “indigenous based arts and culture collaborative centering Indigeneity into the creative practice of Los Angeles by using arts-based strategies to support, advocate for and organize to highlight native and indigenous artists and systems-impacted youth.”
Director of Meztli Projects Joel Garcia, explained that a comprehensive community engagement program had been undertaken to understand people’s thoughts and feelings regarding this issue, including surveys, public events, interviews and listening sessions throughout 2022 in the City of Santa Monica.
“The biggest takeaway is why are we not recommending to either keep or remove the mural? For us, through these conversations, the biggest takeaway that we didn’t want to obscure or look over was the relationship building part. I think what the recommendation that this report offers is an opportunity for none of us to be spectators in the healing and listening that needs to happen,” Garcia said.
The presentation included a conceptual proposal that added artwork to the surrounding walls of the City Hall lobby, the second floor far wall and even the ceiling. Councilmember Gleam Davis asked for a little clarification.
“How do you anticipate looking for someone who’s got the right vision, for lack of a better term? To, as you’d use the word, have the ‘conversation’ with those murals? Are we going to have a competition, where people will submit ideas, or is it a [matter of] appointing a committee that will sift through, how do you anticipate selecting the art?” Davis asked, delicately dancing around the issue of who decides what is art.
To which Klatzker responded, “We’re surrounded by an incredibly gifted and talented artistic community here in Santa Monica and in the region … The RFP that’s released needs to define what are the qualities we’re looking at, for what needs to be included and that will distill who is then coming forward.”
“But we’re also, as per the recommendations [going] to make sure that the artists who are doing it are also representative of these populations that are under seen and … that’s the beautiful challenge of this is that we continue this deep conversation, so that we can get to what is it that are the criteria for these very talented artists to come forward,” Klatzker added, also delicately dancing around the issue of who decides what is art.
De la Torre, one of the most prominent critics of the murals, made reference to a number of pieces of artwork that weren’t mentioned in the report, including one at Santa Monica High, which depicts “similar Native people … bowing down to look like Vikings” along with an installation on the Promenade from a number of years ago that predates the dinosaur fountains.
“The [City Hall mural] image of superiority, inferiority really spoke to us … I remember my son who might have been eight years old, and I looked at the mural, and I asked him, ‘Do you see that mural? Do you see any grouping superior and other grouping inferior?’ And he said, ‘Yes.’ And I said, Okay, so what do you see,’ he says. ‘Well, those people are superior, and those people are inferior.’ And then I asked him who you look most like, and he said, ‘Like the Indians.’ And this is just a little boy, who’s already interpreting the information,” de la Torre said.
The nine recommendations made are: 1. Commission new artwork(s) in City Hall lobby 2. Commission new interpretive panels 3. Ensure that Santa Monica’s public art and commemorative landscape centers equity and belonging 4. Create additional educational materials about the mural 5. Expand DEI+ trainings for City staff 6. Adopt a citywide land/territory acknowledgment initiative 7. Improve representation on Santa Monica committees 8. Facilitate land back in Santa Monica and 9. Facilitate Kuruvungna Springs relationships.
A motion was made by de la Torre and seconded by Vice Mayor Lana Negrete and it passed unanimously 7-0 with a friendly amendment that is to add a 10th recommendation “for City staff to consider employing a restorative justice approach to assess the repairing the harm of past actions of the city’s Santa Monica, impacting bipoc communities. Bipoc is a black indigenous people of color communities.”
scott.snowden@smdp.com