Lawmakers say Capitol artwork is race ‘disgrace’

Just nine statues in the Capitol’s 100-piece Statuary Hall collection depict minorities, a figure that some lawmakers claim is woefully inadequate.

Concerned about the lack of diversity, the legislators are spearheading efforts to make changes to the Capitol’s artwork.

{mosads}“They show a slave pushing a buggy,” House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) told The Hill in reference to a painting in the Capitol.

“It’s really a disgrace that the history of the country is not reflected in the Capitol. If they said that all people are created equal, then why not have equal representation in the Capitol?” said Rangel, one of four Congressional Black Caucus members who chair a House panel.

The Architect of the Capitol’s (AoC) office is responsible for maintaining the Capitol’s art collection, much of which dates back to the construction of the Capitol’s north and south wings in the first quarter of the1800s.

Unlike many of the paintings, the statues in the Statuary Hall Collection were chosen by states, with each state allowed to contribute two.
While the collection depicts doctors, artists, inventors and politicians, less than 10 percent are of minorities.

“[The statues] were put up over a period of many years, when there was very little inclination to take note of historic minorities,” Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) said of the collection, which was established by an act of Congress in 1864. The last statue was added in 2005, completing the collection.

Norton is sponsoring a bill to allow the District of Columbia to add two statues to the collection.

Norton said Frederick Douglass is among the early favorites for D.C. “The chances are good that we could break the color bar,” she said. “The city has been rich in influential African-Americans.”

The bust of Martin Luther King Jr. is the only figure honoring a black leader in the Capitol, although it is not part of the collection.

Said Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.), “The Capitol itself — its artwork — must reflect an ongoing and living process, not just men and a few women stuck in stone, but of the people who fought for a more perfect union.”

Statues depicting Native Americans are by far the most extensive of those honoring minorities, with seven of them showcasing the original Americans. Numerous paintings also include them.

Among the statues: the famous explorer Sakakawea, representing North Dakota; Sequoyah, the man who invented the Cherokee alphabet, representing Oklahoma; and Will Rogers, who also stands in honor of the Sooner State and whose mother was Cherokee.

There are eight women depicted in the collection, with an additional three women carved into the Portrait Monument in the Rotunda, AoC spokeswoman Eva Malecki said.

Two Hispanic men grace the Capitol as part of the collection: missionary Father Junipero Serra and Dennis Chavez, who represented New Mexico as both a congressman and a senator.

That doesn’t sit well with Rep. Joe Baca (D-Calif.), chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, who said the government should diversify the Capitol’s artwork to better represent the contribution of Latinos.

“Having two or three pieces of art to represent over 45 million people doesn’t add up,” he said.

Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.), chairman of the Asian Pacific American Caucus, said the lack of diversity in the artwork of the Capitol is one of the first things he noticed about the building, “There were no blacks, there are no browns, there are no Asians,” he said.

“History is about changing and adding to our body of knowledge in order to reflect more accurately the efforts to build this country,” Honda said.

Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.), a white member who faces a primary challenge from Nikki Tinker, an African-American candidate he defeated in 2006, has also noticed the lack of diversity in the artwork. “The African-American representation is not there,” he said. “You could look around and down and you don’t see it.”

Not everyone agrees, because many of the paintings depicting blacks are painted into the ceilings.

“African-Americans are everywhere is the Capitol — people just don’t know where to look,” said Jesse Holland, the author of Black Men Built the Capitol.

He pointed out a painting on the ceiling of the Capitol that depicts one of the first black men allowed to enter the building, minister Henry Highland Garnet. The painting of Joseph Rainey, the first African-American elected to the House, is among the most prominent portraits honoring black leaders in the Capitol.

Cohen said the art depicting African-Americans should be more prominent. “It should be front and center,” he said.

The Senate recently approved a bill to allow the Joint Committee on the Library and the AoC to move forward in obtaining a statue of civil rights leader Rosa Parks. The statue will not be part of the national collection.

“Everyone who visits the Capitol should know the story of Rosa Parks and her courageous stand for civil rights. After her death, we passed legislation to honor her with a statue because we wanted the world to know the place Rosa Parks holds in our hearts, and in our history,” said Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), who sponsored the legislation.

In 2000, Congress enacted a law that allowed states to replace their statues.

Efforts are under way in Alabama, Ohio, Kentucky and Michigan to replace statues that currently rest in the Capitol — some representing a more diverse slice of American life.

The Capitol Visitor Center (CVC), which is slated to open in November 2008, will recognize some of the first African-Americans who served in Congress in an orientation film and exhibit. The African-Americans who helped build the Capitol will also be recognized, CVC spokesman Tom Fontana said.

Rangel said he has asked the AoC repeatedly to diversify the art in the Capitol, while the AoC’s office said it does not commission artwork.