Senator Wants to 'Promote Some Diversity' in Congressional Artwork

The New York Times ^ | 8/13/03 | SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

[ppaul]

WASHINGTON, Aug. 8 — There is not much to distinguish the painting of Senator Blanche Kelso Bruce from the countless other official portraits that line the corridors of the United States Capitol. The senator, who represented Mississippi in the late 1800's, is dressed in a dark, three-piece suit, a watch chain of gold stretched across his ample belly. His face bears a look of calm seriousness, befitting a man of power.

There is, however, one thing that sets this picture apart: Senator Bruce is black.

In a gallery populated almost exclusively by images of white men, the portrait of Bruce, who was born into slavery and became the first African-American to serve a full Senate term, can be a startling sight. But its position — just outside the entrance to the visitors' seats overlooking the Senate chamber, in view of the thousands of schoolchildren and tourists who pass by each year — is no accident.

Bruce's new prominence is the result of a quiet campaign by Senator Christopher J. Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat, who is seeking to correct what he and other lawmakers regard as a longstanding injustice: a dearth of images of women and members of minorities in one of the nation's most visited buildings. Mr. Dodd, a second-generation senator, practically grew up in the Capitol and said he has long wanted to "promote some diversity" in its displays.

As the senior Democrat on the Senate Rules Committee — a position that gives him a seat on the Senate Commission on Art — he now has the power to do it.

"This has been a place that has been dominated by white males, but that's not the only story," Mr. Dodd said. "It seemed to me that as I looked at the faces of kids coming through here, the face of America is very different. I want them to be able to see somebody who represents who they are."

Yet by dabbling in a realm where art and politics collide, Mr. Dodd has entered the culture wars, a treacherous place for any politician. Some commentators, like Vivien Green Fryd, a professor of art history at Vanderbilt University, call his effort long overdue. Others, like Roger Kimball, an art critic and author, call it political correctness, an exercise in historical hypocrisy.

"It's part of the feminist and civil rights agenda to rewrite history so that the people who had been excluded are now included," said Professor Fryd, a feminist and the author of "Art and Empire: The Politics of Ethnicity in the U.S. Capitol, 1815-1860" (Yale University Press, 1992). "I think it's very, very important that those kinds of works should be added."

Mr. Kimball, who is managing editor of The New Criterion, a monthly magazine, rails against such thinking. "This is to let political correctness triumph over accurate history," he said. "The truth of the matter is that with very few exceptions the people who framed the political documents that founded this country were white men. That's just historical fact."

Of the estimated 800 works in the Capitol's collection, only 21 include depictions of African-Americans — including a portraits of a half-dozen House members, a bronze bust of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and some paintings of historic scenes that include sharecroppers and men working on a cotton gin.

Women fare slightly better: there are 28 works depicting them. Of these, three feature Pocahantas, including one of her baptism in which, Professor Fryd complains, this Indian princess appears "transformed, whitened and Europeanized."

Although women and members of minorities have long served in Congress, certain rules can make it difficult to memorialize them in art. Senators, for instance, cannot appear in portraits until 21 years after they have left Congress, with the exception of the majority and minority leaders. "It's the idea of the test of time," said Diane Skvarla, the Senate curator.

Still, some lawmakers are determined to bring the Capitol's art into the current century. Last month Rep. Danny K. Davis, Democrat of Illinois, introduced legislation requiring the architect of the Capitol to commission a sculpture of women from ethnic minorities. The Capitol's Statuary Hall collection of statues donated by the states includes six women, but all are white, a situation that a spokesman for Mr. Davis called "tragic and unacceptable."

While some deride a sculpture in the
Capitol Rotunda depicting pioneers of
women's suffrage as "three women in a tub,"
others take pride in it.

[ppaul]

Death to White American Males!!!

Diversity is Perversity.

[TontoKowalski]

As the senior Democrat on the Senate Rules Committee — a position that gives him a seat on the Senate Commission on Art — he now has the power to do it.

Wow. The Senate Commission on Art.

I wonder if he had to give up his position as the Minister of Funny Walks to get this plum assignment.

[freedomlover]

I am sure since the NYT didn't mention his party that Senator Blanche Kelso Bruce was no doubt a Democrat, never a Republican.

[Onelifetogive]

I want them to be able to see somebody who represents who they are.

I have a dream...that one day...Americans will see other Americans as representing "who they are."

[Onelifetogive]

Still, some lawmakers are determined to bring the Capitol's art into the current century.

Paging Mr. Mapplethorpe. Paging Mr. Mapplethorp...you are needed in Sen. Dodds office for a photoshoot. Please bring your bullwhip!

[ppaul]

I want them to be able to see somebody who represents who they are.

Who are they?

[capydick]

Here you go. I wonder if Dodd realizes he's helping out a Republican. I'm sure a corrective statement will be forthcoming:

United States Senator Republican of Mississippi Fourty-fourth - Fourty-sixth Congresses

The first black person to serve a full term in the United States Senate, Blanche K. Bruce was born in slavery near Farmville, Virginia , on March 1, 1841. He was tutored by his master's son and worked as a field hand and printer's apprentice as his master moved him from Virginia to Mississippi and Missouri. Bruce escaped slavery at the opening of the Civil War and attempted to enlist in the Union Army. After the military refused his application, he taught school, briefly attended Oberlin College, and worked as a steamboat porter on the Mississippi River. In 1864 he settled in Hannibal Missouri, and organized the state's first school for blacks. Five years later he moved to Mississippi where he entered local politics and established himself as a prosperous landowner. In quick succession he was appointed registrar of voters in Tallahatchie County, tax assessor of Bolivar County, and elected sheriff and tax collector of Bolivar where he also served as supervisor of education. On a trip to the state capital of Jackson in 1870, Bruce gained the attention of powerful white Republicans who dominated Mississippi's Reconstruction government. These men secured more appointments for Bruce and made him the most recognized black political leader in the state. In February 1874, the Mississippi legislature elected Bruce to the United States Senate.

Bruce formally entered the Senate on March 5, 1875, and was elected to three committees: Pensions; Manufactures; and Education and Labor. During the Forty-fifth Congress (1877-79) he served on the Select Committee on the Levee System of the Mississippi River. Although slighted by his Mississippi colleague, James L. Alcorn, Bruce won the friendship and support of Republican senators such as Roscoe Conkling (for whom Bruce would name his only child), and enjoyed a more amicable relationship with Alcorn's Democratic successor, Lucius Q. C. Lamar. Bruce made repeated though futile attempts to convince his fellow senators to seat Louisiana's former governor, P.B.S. Pinchback. He encouraged the government to be more generous in issuing western land grants to black emigrants and favored distribution of duty-free clothing from England to needy blacks who had emigrated to Kansas from the South. Bruce also appealed for the desegregation of United States Army unites and fora Senate inquiry into the violent Mississippi elections of 1875. As a member and temporary chairman of the Committee on River Improvements, he advocated the development of a channel and levee system and construction of the Mississippi Valley and Ship Island Railroad.

On February 14, 1879, during debate on a Chinese exclusion bill that he opposed, Bruce became the first black senator to preside over a Senate session. In April he was appointed chairman of the Select Committee to Investigate the Freedman's Savings and Trust Company. Bruce's six-member committee issued a report naming bank officials who were guilty of fraud and incompetence. Eventually about 61,000 depositors victimized by the bank's 1874 failure received a portion of their money. In January 1880 the Mississippi legislature, now controlled by Democrats, chose James Z. George to succeed Bruce. Before his term ended the following March, Bruce continued to be an activist senator, calling for a more equitable and humane Indian policy and demanding a War Department investigation of the brutal harassment of a Black West Point cadet. AT the 1880 Republican convention in Chicago, Bruce served briefly as presiding officer and received eight votes for vice president.

Following the close of his Senate service on March 3, 1881, Bruce rejected an offer of the ministry to Brazil because slavery was still practiced there. All but one member of the Mississippi congressional delegation endorsed Bruce for a seat in President Garfield' cabinet, but he instead received appointment as registrar of the treasury and served until the Democrat's regained power in 1885. Bruce became a lecturer, an author of magazine articles, and was superintendent of the exhibit on black achievement at the World's Cotton Exposition in New Orleans during 1884-1885. In 1888 Bruce received eleven votes for vice president at the convention that nominated Benjamin Harrison. Harrison, as president, appointed Bruce recorder of deeds for the District of Columbia in 1889. After leaving this office in 1893 Bruce was a trustee of public schools in Washington, D.C., and again registrar of the treasury from 1897 until his death in Washington on March 17, 1898.

[freedomlover]

I'm sure a corrective statement will be forthcoming

Sure thing. Have you seen those flying pigs lately? ;)

[John O]

The one question I have is when they post a picture of a 'gay' person how will anyone know they are gay? (without reading the caption of course)

[nothingnew]

I demand to know WHEN huuricanes will have AFRO-AMERICAN names!!!

FMCDH

[Onelifetogive]

Who are they?

Well, duh! They are who they are. Of course!