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Powerful murals full of rage, anger, defiance, pain, sorrow and hope sprang up across blocks of downtown Oakland’s boarded-up streets during recent Black Lives Matter protests, displaying perhaps what words could not convey.
The murals spoke powerfully to what was going on in the city, the nation and the world. Now, Black leaders are trying to capture lightning in a bottle, preserving the works of art along with the voices and the relevance of the moment.
The plan, led by East Oakland’s Black Culture Zone, is to uninstall the murals, document who painted them, and store the art until it can be curated and put on display, possibly at the Oakland Museum of California, Oakland Art Murmur and city galleries.
“It’s not a novel idea,” says Randolph Belle, who represents the Black Culture Zone, “but it’s an extremely complicated one.”
It’s not as simple, Belle says, as taking the murals down and storing them. There are questions of ownership and how the art will be displayed in the future.
No one is quite certain at this stage who even owns some of the art. Does it belong to the property owner who put up the plywood or to the artist? Some of the works, Belle says, were commissioned by the business owners. And while some artists want to be able to sell their pieces, others find the idea of monetizing the movement distasteful.
The murals began in concert with the protests and marches sparked by the death of George Floyd at the hands of police. The protests called for justice for Blacks and an end to the systemic racism that has shaped our nation from its beginning.
As some protests brought violent clashes with police and looters, shop owners and businesses rushed to board up building windows. Although a few store owners contacted artists about using the plywood as canvases, most murals were spontaneous. Artists found the long swaths of plywood an irresistible attraction. Raw emotions mixed with paint to spread a message.
The Black Culture Zone entered the picture soon after, intent on preserving the art and the message of the movement. The group has support from the City of Oakland, Oakland Museum of California and Oakland Art Murmur to help with the preservation, curation and display, but those officials are taking a backseat, so the Black community can lead the way and the discussion.
There is no shortage of ideas, Belle says.
“Some people want to photograph it and turn it into a coffee table book,” Belle says. “That’s not where we’re at. Some want to use it to build housing for the homeless. It’s too early. Right now, we just want to document it, protect it and keep the focus on the movement. We understand people want to help, but most of them just need to get out of the way.”
There are unique obstacles to curating art from an active movement, and Oakland Museum staffers say they have empathy for what is involved in gathering the art.
The museum collected posters and other artifacts of the Women’s March, says Valerie Huaco, museum deputy director and chief content officer, as well as a banner from Occupy Oakland long after the immediate moment.
There have been similar efforts. The Missouri History Museum collected artifacts from the Ferguson protests, and The Smithsonian is collecting from the current Washington, D.C., protests. The Oakland protest art appears to be the first community-organized effort.
“Many of the murals being created in Oakland are placed in locations that have some level of private and public ownership,” Huaco says, “so the complexity is beyond a poster carried by an individual at a march or artifacts left behind at an event.”
Belle says the Black community remains in the rapid response stage. They need to work quickly when the plywood comes down to preserve the murals. Curating it will come later, he says.
The group wants to record the stories of the artists to create an immersive display, but that is proving difficult as well. Some artists purposely didn’t sign their work, perhaps as a message that this is something larger than one person.
Where to display the murals is an issue for later. Belle says some of the murals will be displayed at a 1-acre site owned by the Black Culture Zone, but that, too, is in the future. Oakland Museum is committed, museum officials say, “to documenting, preserving and amplifying the incredible artwork emerging from Oakland’s ongoing protests against police brutality and systemic racism.” But officials believe — and Black Culture Zone concurs — that the Black community must take the lead in the project.
“It has to be the Black core,” Belle says, “but it will be a strong partnership” with other groups.
Lots of work must be done, the protests aren’t over and more murals continue to pop up. Belle expects there will be more as the country moves through the legal process involving the police officers, who have been arrested and charged in the murders that sparked all of this.
The focus, Belle says, needs to continue to be on the underlying message of racial justice and equality.
“As long as people feel that this time is different,” Belle says, “we need to make sure it is different.”