Written November 4, 2008
The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles
– Manifesto of the Communist Party: 1848, Karl Marx
A canon of beliefs guides society. Socially collective dogma acts as an adhesive to bind the social order into congealed unity. A cohesive philosophy and understanding permits civilization to exist in harmony. The collective and shared canon of beliefs, communal dogma and group philosophy of a society is termed ideology. The influence of Karl Marx on anthropology casts a cynical light on ideology. The scholarly discussions regarding the Marxist Theory of ideology in anthropological literature are legion. The echo of Marxist thought reverberates the same tune. “[Ideology] …masks what is ‘really going on,’ for example, by denying that social or economic inequalities exist” (Johnson 1999). “Ideology… comprises the givens of everyday life, unnoticed, taken for granted, and activated and reproduced in use. It is the means by which inequality, bondage, frustration, etc., are made acceptable, rationalized, or hidden” (Leone et al. 1987). This essay examines one note in the symphonic orchestration of ideological history of the United States.
In 1932, the United States was amidst The Great Depression. The future looked bleak until the Democratic Party nominated Franklin D Roosevelt for the presidency. He offered the public “The New Deal” though at the time of his inauguration, he had little idea what he meant. The New Deal turned out to be a successful failure. By 1938 the economy did rebound, but it was not because the market had revived to the former status quo. Instead, FDR’s strategy created government jobs that compensated the unemployed with a minimal living wage. But this was better than mass starvation of the poor. Critics would later argue that FDR’s policies delayed the return of normal economic growth. However, there can be no doubt, during the tenure of FDR the United States did rise from the very brink of economic collapse to previously unachieved heights in the ensuing greatest war of all time. As a testament to his popularity, FDR is the only president to have been elected to four terms. Accompanying The New Deal was a new hope. Along with economic reform there was also social reform. In a country divided by racial segregation, minorities had been hit even harder than whites by the depression. Roosevelt had appointed John Collier to head the Bureau of Indian Affairs. And Collier proposed the “Indian New Deal.” Thanks to southeastern Democrats creating an adversarial congress, it was stripped of most reforms, but the initial maneuver was perceived as hope in the direction of equality for Native Americans. Mexican Americans endured great hardships as well. Over a half a million were either deported or willingly returned to Mexico. But in 1939 social liberal forces were gathering steam. On the winds of change in economic recovery, were those who saw on the horizon new hope regarding equality for people of all races.[1] As the president of the University of New Mexico in 1939, James Fulton Zimmerman led his campus in his own ideological struggle of hope toward racial equality.
As the University’s seventh president, Zimmerman made strides to integrate the three major cultures in New Mexico. He commissioned Santa Fe architect, John Gaw Meem to design in Spanish-Pueblo architecture (among others) Scholes Hall, the Anthropology Hall and in 1936, the library (Faculty 2008). Head librarian Wilma Loy Shelton conveys the vision of President Zimmerman in 1939: “To use the library to enhance group relations” (Shelton 1939). Indeed, Zimmerman is known to have greatly increased the bond and connection of the university to Latin America (Faculty 2008). In 1938 Zimmerman saw an opportunity to put his ideology on display. He recruited by way of a grant through the Carnegie Foundation, artist Kenneth Miller Adams to create a series of four painted murals to be housed prominently within the library.
By the time Adams began the library murals, he was already well known in the art world. His works were displayed at museums in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Honolulu, Topeka, Colorado Springs, and in Dallas. He studied art in Chicago and New York, served his country as a private in WWI, and returned to New York for more study. He went back to France and Italy for two years before taking up residence in Taos, New Mexico in 1924. He had been commissioned to paint murals in Kansas, the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center and the post office in Deming, New Mexico. He had received many awards and acknowledgments throughout the country. In 1938, he received the Carnegie Foundation grant proposed by Zimmerman to paint the Coronado (now Zimmerman) Library murals at the University of New Mexico.[2] Upon receiving his commission by Zimmerman, Adams had been an accomplished artist steeped in production of southwest art for fifteen years. It appears the stars were aligned for an Adams composition in tribute to racial accord at the University.
A brief description of the murals is supplied from the original grant application authored by Zimmerman. Four separate panels were composed: “The Indian, showing his work as the artist; The Spanish, giving a general idea of their contributions to the civilization in this area in the fields of agriculture and architecture; The Anglo, with scientific contributions; and the union of all three in the life of the Southwest” (Panel). Ms. Loy quotes President Zimmerman on his vision for equality displayed by the mural panels: “…the hope of the future, that through recognition of the contribution each has made, and with democratic and cooperative effort, we may attain a truly significant New Mexico culture” (Shelton 1939). It is undeniable. In 1939, the ideology of the time, the ideology of the mural commissioner and the ideology of the artist was one of racial harmony and equality. Yet, there were those who saw things differently.
Twice, the unity panel was defaced. The vandals had the same justifications in the 40’s as in the 70’s. In his essay, Ethnic/Sexual Personas in Tri-cultural New Mexico, Curtis Wilson captures the sense of the opposition: “ [There is a] skin pigment hierarchy [that displays] the hyper-Aryanism of every Anglo figure;” “… [The murals depict the] Anglo [in a] central authoritative position… [As he is] the only one with open eyes;” and, “[It is the Anglo] holding a baby and thus the future. The future belongs to Anglo descendents” (Wilson 2003). There is gender opposition as well. Lilly Irvin asserts, “[The] women [are] without faces or mouths. It says they have no voices” (Harper 194[4]). The observations of the dissident voices cannot be denied. Additionally, I would add a few of my own observations. History is replete with the descriptions of mayhem and anarchy as the three major cultures of New Mexico collided. Distinctively, during the era of early Spanish emigration to New Mexico, there were significant declines in native populations. Ramenofsky expresses an observation that encapsulates possible causes, “…[W]hether disease was a less significant factor of population loss than raiding, famine, or enslavement cannot be answered with current, available evidence” (Ramenofsky 1996). Within the murals there is no discernable portrayal of battle, clash, or even mild disagreement. The vision portrayed in the murals ignores the savage atrocities and heinous sins committed by cultural and racial ancestry. Clearly, Adams closes his eyes to conflict between the races as he applies his painter’s brush. The murals unmistakably reflect an ideological false consciousness, not New Mexico as it was at any time prior to the painting. An adherent to Marxist Theory might comment that the murals are obviously serve the interests of the ruling bourgeois of the academic and artistic class in an effort to bury the past, concealing it from the student proletariat.
In his discussion of ideology, McGuire makes abundant points that could be applied to the situation described above. Due to an increasingly diminishing available space, we ignore all but the following: “Dominant ideologies can mystify the true nature of social relations in at least two fundamentally different ways. They can deny the existence of inequality or they may naturalize inequality. Ideology denies the existence of inequality by masking or hiding it. Ideology naturalizes inequalities… by denying they are social products” (McGuire 1989). In the murals inequality is denied. Perhaps the Marxists and dissenters would prefer a portrayal of a bloody and microbial genocide combined with dash of raiding, a smidge of enslavement, and a healthy dose of famine for good measure. Because the Marxist and dissenter’s observations are true does not mean their interpretations are also true. The ideology of the producers of the murals is not mystifying the subordinate classes. The murals reflect no basis for conflict. The dissenters are people who see a revolution behind every innocent expression and clearly have too much time on their hands. A far more constructive means of dissent would be to propose and create a composition that reflects the hope of their own era. Marxism in anthropology is but one in a continually increasing arsenal of theoretical tools. In the instance of the Adams murals, Marxism fails.
The question before us is the value and message of the murals. The context of the creation of the murals demonstrates there is no intention of racial superiority, or class denigration. The denial of the reality of racial equality is not an intention of the producers to negate the real conflict, but to aspire to a new reality. The murals do not depict Marxist class struggle. Rather, they depict racial strengths combining to make something lager than the sum of their parts. To bastardize the rock band The Who, Meet the old hope, same as the new hope. I think the panels should remain, unchanged and un-annotated. Zimmerman and Adams owe neither Marxists nor anyone else apologias pro vita sua. They expressed their admirable ambitions and aspirations in a vocabulary of their era. If anything, the message of the panels reinforces the educational mission and ideology of the university. To the dissenters I raise the immortal words of Rodney King, “Can’t we all just get along?”
Works Cited
Faculty Handbook, University of New Mexico, Office of the Secretary. A10, Information: ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSITY. Retrieved October 30, 2008, from UNM website: http://www.unm.edu/~handbook/A10.html
Harper, Jason
194(4) Groups Approach Consensus in Debate Over ‘Racist’ Murals. Daily Lobo, October 12, 194(4?), University of New Mexico. University of New Mexico Library. Center for Southwest Research, University Libraries, University of New Mexico.
Johnson, Matthew
1999 Archaeological Theory: An Introduction, p. 95. Blackwell, Malden, MA.
Leone, Mark P., Parker B. Potter, Jr., and Paul A. Shackel
1987 Toward a Critical Archaeology. Current Anthropology 28(3): 284.
Marx, Karl
1848 Manifesto of the Communist Party. In The Portable Karl Marx, ed. Eugene Kamenka, p. 203. (1983) Viking Penguin, New York.
McGuire, Randall H.
1989 Dialogues with the Dead: Ideology and the Cemetery. In The Recovery of Meaning: Historical Archaeology in the Eastern United States, p. 440. Smithsonian Institutional Press, Washington DC.
Panel. Library Murals (folder, photocopy) Center for Southwest Research, University Libraries, University of New Mexico.
Ramenofsky, A. F.
1996 The Problem of Introduced Infectious Diseases in New Mexico: AD 1540-1680. Journal of Anthropological Research. 52(2):178.
Santa Fe New Mexican.
1939-40 A page containing multiple artist biographies. The specific date is not annotated but sometime in 1939-40. Kenneth Adams (folder, clipping) Center for Southwest Research, University Libraries, University of New Mexico.
Shelton, Wilma Loy
1939 Guide to the Library. Self published pamphlet: University of New Mexico Library. Center for Southwest Research, University Libraries, University of New Mexico.
Tindall, George Brown and David Emory Shi
1984 America: A Narrative History. Vol. 2, Pp.1022-1062. W.W. Norton Co., New York.
Wilson, Curtis
2003 Ethnic/Sexual Personas in Tri-cultural New Mexico. In The Culture of Tourism, the Tourism of Culture: Selling the Past to the Present in the American Southwest, ed. Hal K. Rothman, p. 28. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque. Library Murals (folder, chapter photocopy) Center for Southwest Research, University Libraries, University of New Mexico.
[1] The information regarding Roosevelt and the 1930’s can be corroborated in numerous historical texts. The author recommends the excellent two-volume narrative historical overview suggested to his wife by Dr. Ferenc Szasz: America: A Narrative History written by George Brown Tindall and David Emory Shi.
[2] Information regarding Kenneth Miller Adams was obtained from a newspaper article published in the Santa Fe New Mexican. The specific date is unclear but sometime in 1939-40. The clipping is within the “Kenneth Adams” folder at the Center for Southwest Research (CSWR), University Libraries, University of New Mexico.
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