The University Of Notre Dame Has Decided To Cover All Murals Of Christopher Columbus And His Discovery Of The New World

Source: https://artnet.com

Notre Dame University has decided to cover all the murals of Christopher Columbus and the depiction of his historical journey across the Atlantic. These murals were painted by Luigi Gregori from 1882 through 1884 when there was an influx of Catholic immigrants moving to the United States.

In a letter to the campus written by university president, Rev. John I. Jenkins, he said “The murals present us with several narratives not easily reconciled, and the tensions among them are especially perplexing for us because of Notre Dame’s distinctive history and Catholic mission. At the time they were painted, the murals were not intended to slight indigenous peoples, but to encourage another marginalized group. In the second half of the 19th century, Notre Dame’s Catholic population, largely immigrants or from families of recent immigrants, encountered significant anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant attitudes in American public life. At the same time, Columbus was hailed by Americans generally as an intrepid explorer, the ‘first American’ and the ‘discoverer of the New World.’ Gregori’s murals focused on the popular image of Columbus as an American hero, who was also an immigrant and a devout Catholic. The message to the Notre Dame community was that they too, though largely immigrants and Catholics, could be fully and proudly American.


Source: http://indianaeconomicdigest.com

Father Jenkins then pointed out that this is not the only message people recieve from seeing the murals.
“For the native peoples of this ‘new’ land, however, Columbus’s arrival was nothing short of a catastrophe,” Father Jenkins said. “Whatever else Columbus’s arrival brought, for these peoples it led to exploitation, expropriation of land, repression of vibrant cultures, enslavement, and new diseases causing epidemics that killed millions. As Pope John Paul II said in a 1987 meeting with the Native Peoples of the Americas, ‘the encounter [between native and European cultures] was a harsh and painful reality for your peoples. The cultural oppression, the injustices, the disruption of your way of life and of your traditional societies must be acknowledged.’ The murals’ depiction of Columbus as beneficent explorer and friend of the native peoples hides from view the darker side of this story, a side we must acknowledge.”


With this reason, and after thorough conversations with his staff, alumni, students, as well as the representatives of the Native American community, Father Jenkins announced his decision to cover the murals, and just reproduce these images in order to move them to another part of the campus wherein the conversation can be made with a more historical context.

“We wish to preserve artistic works originally intended to celebrate immigrant Catholics who were marginalized at the time in society, but do so in a way that avoids unintentionally marginalizing others. “

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