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Office of Gov. Dennis Daugaard
500 E. Capitol Ave.
Pierre, S.D. 57501
605-773-3212
125th Anniversary Feature
Thursday, September 18, 2014
Contact: Jim Soyer at 605-773-5689 or Jim.Soyer@state.sd.us
EDITORS/NEWS DIRECTORS: This week’s 125th anniversary feature is below for you to use as you wish. Feel free to cut, add or edit to suit your needs. If you are writing local or state history articles and need some research assistance, contact Jim Soyer in the Governor’s Office.
Controversial Painting Covered
An excerpt from “The South Dakota State Capitol: The First Century” by Marshall Damgaard
When William Janklow returned to the Governor’s Office in 1995, he inherited a long-festering controversy concerning the painting on the west wall of the Governor’s Reception Room. Edwin Blashfield had painted that artwork, “Progress of South Dakota,” back in 1910, when he had been considered the dean of American mural painters. He created the mural “The Progress of Civilization” on the spectacular dome of the reading room in the Thomas Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., as well as murals in the Capitols of Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. The central vignette on the 1896 series of the $2 bill also featured a Blashfield mural.
“Progress of South Dakota” depicted a beautiful and wholesome young woman resolutely striding forward, her progress guided by a hovering angel and enabled by the manful and stalwart soldier and settler, who are clearing away the artist’s idea of the impediments to civilization—a dark and hooded figure that has been variously identified as “Outlawry” or “Death” and the grasping and desperate Native Americans.
Over the years, public arguments over the painting grew louder and louder. Large numbers of people argued in favor of removing the painting, labeling it “racist” and saying that its theme was made even more distasteful by the fact that it was accorded a place of honor (and afforded implicit endorsement) in the Capitol of a state that ranks third in percentage of Native American population. “It hurts,” one Native American educator said. “You wouldn’t like to see that happen to your ancestry.” Large numbers of other people argued in favor of retaining the painting, echoing American philosopher George Santayana’s admonition that, “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” In a 1994 memo to the Legislative Research Council, the Capitol Complex Restoration and Beautification Commission wrote: “Denying the racism of the past not only edits or rewrites history, but it removes the very object lessons that expand the resolve of people to make the future better.”
For a time during the 1970s, the Kneip Administration had, with a brass wall plaque, re-titled the Blashfield mural, “Only By Remembering Our Mistakes Can We Learn.” Neither the defenders nor the detractors of the painting had been pleased by that compromise. At other times, the State covered Blashfield’s work with a maroon drapery which could be parted for a quick peek at the painting, and at still other times the State covered up the Blashfield mural with another large mural, “Unity Through the Great Spirit” by Paul War Cloud Grant from Sisseton, which today hangs in the State Cultural Heritage Center. The 1994 Legislature passed a bill finding that the Blashfield painting “is inappropriate for display in the State Capitol” and that the commission “shall consider alternatives for taking the oil panel off display in the Governor’s Reception Room. However, the alternatives may not include the destruction or sale of the painting.”
Research by the commission revealed that the mural could not be removed without damaging it, and the situation stayed in limbo. Finally, in 1998, Governor Janklow, after a lengthy conversation with Marie Randall, a Lakota grandmother from Wanblee, South Dakota, ordered the painting covered. The Upper Midwest Conservation Association then cleaned and varnished the painting and hermetically sealed it. State workers placed sheetrock over the area, texturing and painting it to match the existing walls.
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