This weeks assignment was hard for me to write about because I feel very inflicted on the issues to consider in the reading in comparison to the murals, and the time of period that they were written in. I understand that given different organizations and what they stand for in the US, it makes sense that they would want to be represented properly through the expression of public art, but I also think given different time periods, and through different artists, that different representations will be presented.

With these murals the biggest things that I inspect as far as topics of issue that come in mind are civic improvement, issues of diversity, capturing history and relevance.

When it comes to civic improvement I think that these murals represent how, in a sense, there has been civic improvement throughout the world leading up until the time and point in which the murals were painting and to an extent. These murals definitely signify important periods through out the years of growth in the world both in the arts and and in the sciences, but I think that they excuse a lot of important people included in those time periods. In this sense I think about the civil issues of slavery and how it was abolished or how women were given the right to vote in the 20s and how that is not represented. I am sure in one way or another this significant impact in the US and the world could be represented as civic improvement in the world of science and in the arts.

The next issue that this raises concerns with is the issues of diversity. When looking at these murals it is hard to tell any bit of diversity that you see in them when it comes to race. It is clear to see the types of impacts that the Caucasian race has made on the world and within the issue of civic development, but there is not real portrayal about the impact that people of color have made on the impact in the world and especially in American life. It seems to me that the only impact we see is how they have helped along the way to improve life for the Caucasian race, and not in a good way whatsoever.

The next issue that comes to mind is that of capturing history. Does this mural capture history in the kind of light that everyone would be able to appreciate? I can’t say that it does. When I view it I think that there is a lot of important parts of history that the murals don’t capture and a lot of people important to the world that could be included to make these murals in concurrence with the times and live of people in the world today.

In turn this brings me to the point of relevance. In what ways is this painting relevant? I obviously think that this painting is relevant in a lot of sense to the times and significance of what had been happening in that period. It makes sense that it was significant in many ways to what had been happening in the periods that is representing as well. But, as I have made a case of it is not necessarily relevant to the times and happenings that we live in now and today. In fact it doesn’t seem that it was entirely representative and relevant to the time and the people involved within that period either. I think that in many ways these murals represent the feelings of many Americans, and especially in Oregon, the period of the late 30s and early 40s. We were still very much a segregated country both in color and gender, and I think the whether intentionally or not, the Runquist brothers made note of that in each of their works.