D.6.1 Arnautoff's George Washington Murals and the Crisis of Progressive Neoliberalism

Marc James Léger, Independent Scholar

In 2019 the San Francisco Board of Education formed a committee to investigate complaints that the New Deal murals by Victor Arnautoff that were made expressly for the George Washington High School in San Francisco were harmful to students because they depict the reality of slavery in the colonial-revolutionary era and because they allegorize the tragedy of the doctrine of Manifest Destiny for Native Americans. The issues that were raised revived discussions from the late 1960s and the context of black liberation politics that led to the creation of a complementary set of murals in the school by Dewey Crumpler. This second time, however, the militant politics of black power had transformed into what Nancy Fraser refers to as "progressive neoliberalism," where postmodern variants of identity politics are used to undermine the universalist premises of democratic socialist class politics and underwrite the neoliberal uses of identity to advance the interests of the global plutocracy.

The public response to the Board's decision to destroy the murals led to an international campaign to reverse course. This complex process involved a multiplicity of social forces, from local community groups to nationwide professional organizations. The consultation approach that was manipulated by the Board, and the manufactured media confusion that ensued, demonstrated not only the "mediocratic" tendency of conservative institutions, but the failure of many involved to recognize the class politics that define four distinct eras: the revolutionary period, the 1930s Popular Front against fascism, the sixties and today's era of neoliberal post-politics. Contemporaneous and ongoing efforts — like the New York Times "1619 Project" and the Chicago Monuments Project — similarly fail to distinguish emancipatory class politics from the disaster capitalism of the extreme centre. The case of the Arnautoff murals reveals ideological fault lines that are endemic to discussions within socially engaged art.

D.6.2 Is There An Intersection Between Class and Contemporary Culture?

Scott Marsden, Independent Scholar

Class as a critical category has fallen out of favour in many academic and cultural institutions, while the real impact of class continues to affect the lives of working people who are strategically excluded from contemporary culture. The relationship between socio-economic class, the artist and the cultural institution discourages any analyses as a matter of class interest. These issues have led to economic and cultural inequalities that have kept many members of working communities out of these public spaces. Creativity is critical to social change, and cultural spaces must be reimagined as alternative spaces to build toward a "living culture" for everyone in our communities. This paper presents four artistic/curatorial projects that make connections between working-class communities and artists that examine issues of work, class relations, cultural, and community activism. This paper also explores various artistic models, including creative forms of critical inquiry, artistic co-creation with communities, models of collaboration, and participatory meaning-making processes.