Artifact 8- Public Art

For unit 10 we were asked to go to the Knight Library at UO and observe the Runquist Murals. Albert and Arthur Runquist created the murals in the 1930s. They are two separate murals titled Development of the Arts and Development of the Sciences. They show the growth of both art and science throughout history and the phases that we as a society have gone through in advancing in the department of both art and science. This unit focused on learning about the how public art can provide us with a new view of history. Learning about the Runquist murals helped to provide us with an example of the power behind one painting. At first glance, the murals look like a typical painting from the old days, but when you take the time to observe them and inspect the detail of the characters, you are able to see the reasoning behind the paintings, the reason for their creation. Most art comes with hidden meanings, which is what makes it so interesting. There is always an untold story about art that the observer is supposed to try to figure out and interpret.

In this unit I learned about the Works Progress Administration, an organization that was created in order to provide work for artists. It was created in 1935 and was the first art program to be funded by the federal government. When WPA was in existence, the artists who were a part of it created a total over 100,000 paintings. WPA ended in 1943, but it is insane to know that such a large number of paintings were created in less then 10 years by one program. This shows that funding of the arts is necessary. There is potential for some many beautiful paintings and pieces to be created and all it would take is a little bit of funding.

For this unit we were given the option to recreate the Runquist murals in anyway that we wanted. I chose to recreate the murals by adding form of modern art and technology to the original painting. This made me think a lot about unit 9, remix, because it was all about copyright laws. It makes me wonder that if by only adding to the original murals, was I violating copyright laws?