In City Hall mural, hanging scene remains intact

CEDAR RAPIDS - Worry that an image of a Wild West vigilante hanging might have been removed from a Depression-era mural being uncovered from beneath a coat of paint at City Hall has been for naught.

On Thursday, a restoration company working for the city to remove paint that has hidden the mural since 1963 found the hanging scene intact and undamaged, city officials said.

The news was different the day before when Scott Haskins, of Fine Arts Conservation Laboratories of California, discovered that another image was removed from the 1930s mural before it was painted over in what had been a federal courtroom and is now the City Council chambers.

The damaged image shows a physician and a naked patient, but newspaper headlines declaring 'Sweden Defeats Syphilis” and 'Play Ball” had been removed at some point.

The mural, which covers the top of the four walls, was painted over in 1956, unveiled again in 1963, and quickly painted over again as federal judges consulted with artists and decided the art was not significant enough to keep.

A chief complaint was about the hanging scene, which at that time was situated directly across from the jury box.

Views on art change and the city is in the process of restoring the mural, now working on the third of the four walls.

What happened to the image of the newspaper headlines about syphilis and when it happened remained a mystery.

A photo from The Gazette taken in 1956 before the mural was painted over the first time shows the headlines intact.

Debbie Frank, judicial assistant to Senior U.S. District Court Judge Edward McManus, said Thursday that the judge, who was on the court in 1963, had no recollection of any image missing from the mural when it was unveiled and quickly painted over again.

A Gazette story in 1956 indicated that the federal government considered moving the mural, but then painted over it.

Mel Andringa, a Cedar Rapids artist and something of an expert on the mural, Thursday said it might be possible that the area of the newspaper headlines was thought 'so insignificant” that it was used as a 'test strip” to see if the mural could be removed.

It is also possible that the image was sufficiently objectionable that it was edited out.