Event

Join Penn History on April 12, 5:00-7:00, for a showing of the film Town Destroyer (52 mins.) followed by conversation with the two directors, Alan Snitow and Deborah Kauffman.  It will be held in The Arch, Room 208. Professor Kathy Peiss (emerita) will serve as chair.

Town Destroyer examines a heated controversy over Depression-era WPA murals painted by leftwing artist Victor Arnautoff in a San Francisco public high school, which depict George Washington not only as a military leader and President, but also as a slaveowner and destroyer of Native peoples. (Arnautoff had served as an assistant to Diego Rivera in Mexico.) The documentary explores the politics of art and history at a time of polarized national debate over the power of images, racism, trauma, and what should be taught in schools. You can find more information about the film here: https://www.snitow-kaufman.org/the-mural-controversy/

(There’s also a Ukraine connection: Arnautoff later returned to the Soviet Union in 1963, and spent many years in Mariupol, Ukraine where he had attended gymnasium. With the Russian army’s destruction of the city of Mariupol in 2022, his many murals there were lost.)