Updated on October 11, 2017.
A Burlington activist said he used graffiti Monday to make a political statement about a mural off Church Street.
Albert Petrarca, who describes himself as a member of the Off the Wall coalition, said in a press release that he and other members of the group defaced an identification plaque that accompanies the “Everyone Loves a Parade!” mural downtown. Petrarca described the public art, which is 124 feet by 16 feet, as a “white supremacist symbol” that obliterates “First Nation peoples’ lives and history.”
The goal? “To reset the debate on why an undeniably racist piece of ‘art’ and ‘history’ occupies our town square,” wrote Petrarca, an activist who is outspoken on a variety of Burlington issues.
“Colorful and hyperrealistic,” Seven Days reported in 2012, “the mural unspools an eclectic cast of major and minor Vermont celebrities.” It’s located on the side of a building that houses Banana Republic along the pedestrian-only Leahy Way, which leads to the Marketplace parking garage. And yes, for those wondering, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) is also depicted in the mural.
It also includes Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger, who is seen waving to the parade-loving crowd with his daughter, Li Lin, sitting astride his shoulders and his wife, Stacy, standing at his side.
Petrarca’s coalition demands that Weinberger “immediately withdraw his consent to being on this mural and insist that his figure be removed from it.”
The mayor released a statement Monday evening:
The city appreciates the outreach regarding this public art. The city is deeply committed [to] inclusion and diversity, and I have directed Ron Redmond to review the issues raised by today’s protest and provide a report and recommendations within 30 days. While I appreciate the hard work and private resources that went into creating the mural, the issues raised today deserve careful review.
Redmond is the executive director of the Church Street marketplace, which commissioned the work.
The timing of the defacement appears not to be a coincidence. Columbus Day, declared by Governor Phil Scott as Indigenous Peoples’ Day in Vermont, has long been controversial for its whitewashing of the explorer Christopher Columbus’ disastrous impact on the natives in the Americas. Statues around the country dedicated to Columbus have been defaced as the holiday neared.
“People all over the U.S. are reexamining the flags, statues and memorials in our public commons,” Petrarca wrote. “Racism and fake history have no place in Burlington.”
Petrarca later called police to report what he’d done, Deputy Chief Shawn Burke said Wednesday in a press release. Surveillance video footage showed Petrarca, alone, writing “Off the Wall” in spray paint, Burke reported. Petrarca was cited for unlawful mischief, according to Burke.
The Church Street Marketplace commissioned the mural in 2009 and it was completed in 2012, according to Redmond.
The $100,000 project, privately funded, was intended to celebrate the quadricentennial of Samuel de Champlain’s 1609 discovery of Lake Champlain. It includes Vermonty figures such as Trey Anastasio, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Grace Potter, John Deere, Madeleine Kunin and Maria von Trapp. There are also nonVermonters, such as Elvis Presley and Abraham Lincoln. A likeness of actor Edward James Olmos, who is also not a Vermonter, makes an improbable appearance, as Seven Days reported in 2016.
Featured businesses, including Ben & Jerry’s, Sweetwaters and Hotel Vermont, paid sponsorships and the mural includes their logo or storefront.
Before he finished the project, Québec artist Pierre Hardy* made several additions, including Weinberger, who’d been elected mayor just months before the mural’s August 2012 unveiling.
“We asked him if he wanted to be included. We just felt that was a nice thing to do,” said Redmond, noting that former mayors Peter Clavelle and Bob Kiss are also included.
The accompanying plaque, which Off the Wall members sprayed paint on, provides a legend of people pictured. The plaque does not explain the identity of one person depicted wearing Native American garb.
Yet the people included are overwhelmingly white. Redmond admits there were “lots and lots of more people we could have added.” In retrospect, he said, he would have included a tribute to the Buffalo Soldiers, a contingent of black military men who were stationed at Fort Ethan Allen in 1909.
“Church Street is a place that’s constantly evolving, and people feel a strong sense of ownership — and that’s a good thing,” Redmond said. “We love that people are engaged and we want to hear from people; we want to understand. We’ve been thinking about this, too. As we look at that mural, we’re thinking about, How do we add to this? How do we evolve? How do we use this as an opportunity to make it more dynamic, more inclusive, more robust than it already is?”
Updating the mural would likely be cost prohibitive, somewhere in the $20,000 to $30,000 range, according to Redmond. Alternatively, he said, there have been discussions about more murals along the marketplace, including one on the wall opposite “Everyone Loves a Parade!”
“Now we need to really take a look at what we created,” Redmond said. “It’s 2017. What did we miss, and what do we need to do now? And that’s OK. You can’t get mad.”
*Correction, October 9, 2017: A previous version of this story misidentified the muralist, Pierre Hardy.
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It is long past time that Vermont stop patting itself on the back for not being racist. Racism here expresses itself
in ways ranging from cluelessly racit murals to racist graffiti to outright nazis and racist attacks. Often the worst offenders are liberals who seek to divorce themselves from the racist history of the country and state without challenging their own deeply held racist views and actions.
It is long past time that Vermont stop patting itself on the back for not being racist. Racism here expresses itself in many ways ranging from clueless and insensitive murals to racist grafitti to outright nazis. Often the worst are liberals desparately trying to divorce themselves from racism without recognizing that their attitudes are deeply racist.
I guess the Marginalized Coalition of Victims has arrived to be embarrassingly histrionic. I hope the slings and arrows of mild disagreement wont cause any lasting injuries.
this is what you get when a foreigner makes public art…. a Vermonter would have known about efforts of the Queen City for inclusion
The comments made by Mayor Weinburger and Ron Redmond are heartening, to say the least. Also reassuring and promising are the important questions that have arisen due to Albert Petrarca’s act of “unlawful mischief”, for which he was cited … by the by. What’s disheartening is the fact that some of the above comments are so rude and insensitive. The reality is that the mural depicts a white “history” and white businesses, how can it be welcoming to Native Americans, People of Color or New Americans and their children, especially when the one “Native American” portrayed is not even named on the identification plaque (which, by the way, is what was defaced, not the actual mural)?
As someone who has recently moved to Vermont (I know, I know, I’m not supposed to express an opinion on anything until my family has been here for 7 generations), I’m surprised at the lack of genuine empathy for First People and other people of color apparent in these comments. I mean — a mural commemorating the “discovery” of Lake Champlain — and people don’t understand why that phrase alone erases the identity, legacy, and dignity of First People? The language of “discovery” was, in most places, changed DECADES ago. A mural that has minimal representation of people of color, and people commenting in this section seem to have little or no awareness of the violence it does to a person’s soul EVERY day to view representations in media and elsewhere without folks who look like you or are of a similar heritage? If you’ve always been from the dominant culture, try to imagine for a moment what it would be like if you were not. People don’t bother caring about the experience of others because they don’t HAVE to care, and that, in a nutshell, is the root of white supremacy.
i find this mural ridiculous because it only shows folks who are in power, folks in traditional leadership, and of course those folks are mostly white in a state that has deep roots in segregation and racism. In a time when we need to name all the ways exclusion impacts all people’s, this graffiti is really important, because it hilights a mural that has no thought about who is receiving this community art. I think of murals as opportunities for people to see themselves reflected, to celebrate the powerful stories that don’t get shown in traditional ‘art.’ Murals are truly accessible, you just have to walk by. And a mural that is so accessible and yet so exclusionary of the powerful stories of communities of color is ultimately a failure of art and of community. Murals, as public displays of art for all, need to consider whose stories are being included, and whose aren’t. And if indeed this mural was purposefully made hilighting only one part of a complex history of growth, resistance, struggle, and injustice, meaning the colonizer or white folks part, then it is necessarily exclusionary and offensive. There are so many unifying and complex ways to tell truth in our histories. I consider this mural as a failure of imagination, and hope people will stop acting like public art has no meaning. For the child of color who walks by this mural day after day, seeing those public officials not reflect back her life, the message is clear– you are not on of us, and you are not part of this community art.
Well, I was happy to read that “Off the Wall” had been written on the ID plaque, instead of on the fifty-foot mural itself. I’m not for vandalism, but how many ways do people have of letting the City (and the residents of the city) know that a public mural raises issues? This reminds me of the controversy about Pittsburgh’s Stephen Foster statue, in which a black banjo-player is depicted as poor – also smaller in stature. It is a beautiful statue, though, whereas this mural is…detailed and colorful. Norman Rockwell it ain’t. Last, I resent “old man” and “crazy activist” and “grandpa” jeering. Less bullying is better.
This is all a big load of performative outrage. If Petrarca truly thought that this was white supremacy that erased the lives of people of color, the he would have defaced the actual mural or tried to remove it. It would be the only reasonable action, if the mural were truly a white supremacist symbol. But Petrarca knows it isnt, hes just grandstanding for attention.
In a city with a severe housing shortage — indeed, a housing crisis–more high end condos and student housing isn’t going to put a dent in it. Sure, there will be some “affordable housing” too so I guess we should be thankful.
Jobs benefit the city, of course, but what jobs are being created? Sure, we’ll need skilled labor to attend the parking garage, clean the building for the high end condo owners, and man the registers at all of the new retail space but those jobs won’t realistically allow anyone to actually earn enough money to live in any of the hosing being created.
As far as the mural, it’s a nice idea to have one. Maybe it is time to change the content of it and not because the former one was offensive. Weinberger can even have Sinex added to it if that’s what Sinex wants.