Capitol Images: Preserving the Past, Reflecting the Reality

Sensory overload brought about by the vast number of visual images characterizes the Iowa State Capitol’s third-floor. Immediately as you ascend the Statehouse’s main staircase between the second- and third-floor your undivided attention is captured by the mural painting “Westward”, although only momentarily. For after you have briefly perused “Westward” your eyes cannot help but be lifted to the six mosaics in arched panels. Initially, they remain deceptively far from your vantage point which draws you up the staircase to the third-floor in hopes of getting a closer, less distorted and more neck friendly view of the images. Once on the third-floor you turn around – assuming you didn’t climb the stairs backward – to take in the mosaics more easily. Within the mosaics are human images which depict, from left to right, defense, charities, education, and the executive, legislative and judiciary branches of government. The artistic style harkens back to the Roman Empire, an Empire often credited with having a vast influence on America’s current culture. The images are grand, elegant and colorful – yet white.

Similar to words such as race and gender which, according to Stephanie Wildman in Making Systems of Privilege Visible, seem “linguistically neutral” so too does the mosaic seem visually neutral (89). The soft, stoic faces of the human images do not overtly scream white privilege; they simply link us to the visualization of our historical past. The pictures nonetheless represent the “base of unacknowledged privilege” spoken so thoroughly about in White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack by Peggy McIntosh, and highlight McIntosh’s core belief that the “oppressiveness was unconscious” (98). Unconscious in the sense that the dominate white culture at the time of the mosaics commissioning would likely have been oblivious to the underlying statement created by the all white cast of characters pictured in Frederick Dielman’s work. This unspoken statement is “that which keeps people of color off-balance” (Wise 107).

As you move beyond this mosaic and into the rotunda, again you are met with grand, elegant and colorful – yet white – human images. These types of images, in fact, are scattered throughout one of the nation’s most visually stunning statehouses. It is not until entering a private office in the Governor’s suite that you will be exposed to a piece of art which depicts a group of children that encapsulate the rainbow of human skin colors. Not surprisingly that office belongs to the Governor’s policy liaison for cultural diversity, among other topics.

If we are able to overcome the fact that in American society “white privilege is not something (whites) get to decide whether (they) want to keep” then we can start addressing the issues, which to many, are invisible in the Capitol (Jensen 103). This does not mean that the historical images which currently adorn the Capitol need to be removed because of their whiteness. It does, however, indicate that preserving the historical significance of the Capitol cannot overshadow the inclusive nature in which our State has been moving since its inception. If the last piece of artwork installed in the Capitol occurred in 1907 – the six mosaics – then the time has come to commission a new work of art which illustrates the diversity of Iowa’s proud multicultural community and which will symbolize the direction of Iowa’s future.

-- Bob Tuttle