Art as Advocate

While at first glance this appears to be an idyllic river scene, dangers lurk in the background. A sandbar lies menacingly to the left, and a snag, or fallen tree, punctures the river’s surface to the right. Both features were capable of wrecking rafts and steamboats alike, serious impediments to the future of commerce on both the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers.

George Caleb Bingham was primarily a self-taught artist who spent much of his childhood in Franklin, Missouri. Fascinated by people and places along Missouri’s rivers, Bingham captured many scenes of river life in the later half of the 1800s. Both an artist and a politician, he often used his paintings to lobby for commerce and investment in his home state.

Raftsmen Playing Cards depicts a quiet moment of leisure among six raftsmen aboard a simple raft. The raftsmen had the job of transporting goods from sites of production to commerce destinations via rivers such as the Mississippi and Missouri. Exhibited first in St. Louis and then in New York City in 1847, Raftsmen Playing Cards conveyed two messages. One was directed mostly to its national audience: in sharp contrast to the typical image of river laborers, who were frequently portrayed as vulgar, violent characters, Bingham’s raftsmen appear clean and collegial—civilized folks who could be trusted to uphold the pursuits of the nation.

Raftsmen Playing Cards also participated in a national debate central to Missouri politics at the time. Throughout the 1840s Bingham and other Whig politicians advocated for the federal government to fund the cleanup of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers as part of their desire to integrate Missouri more fully into the national economy. As this vision relied on rivers to move goods from their places of production in the West to their markets in the East, any threat to river commerce took on outsize importance. In Raftsmen Playing Cards Bingham demonstrated a principal impediment to navigation: trees that have toppled from the sandy banks into the river lodge in its bottom, creating large snags, seen at the right of the painting. In showcasing these snags and other dangers on a national scale, Raftsmen Playing Cards advocated for the cleanup of these rivers with federal funds.

In 1847 Bingham exhibited a second painting, Lighter Relieving a Steamboat Aground, showing the result of such obstructions: a steamboat has wrecked on a sandbar, necessitating the rescue of its passengers and cargo. Together, these two paintings offer a pointed rebuke to critics of federal intervention—such as President James Polk, who had repeatedly vetoed a bill to clear the rivers—by showing the results of their inaction.

• In what ways do you think the artist used this painting to advocate for river cleanup?
• Do you feel that the artist was successful in conveying his message?
• In what way might you change or adapt the painting to make it even more effective?
• George Caleb Bingham highlighted one group of people who appreciated and benefited from the Mississippi River. Consider the social value of the river. Why would it be valuable to preserve these natural resources from social or cultural perspectives?

A family is about to be torn apart in a tragic outcome of chattel slavery, where human beings were denied agency and treated as property. The auctioneer’s hair curls into devil horns, revealing his evil character. This tabletop sculpture, an icon of the abolitionist cause, was created following John Rogers’s 18-month residence in Hannibal, Missouri, where he had worked from 1856 to 1857 as a master mechanic for the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad. As he expressed to his family of “rank abolitionists” in Massachusetts, “the curse of slavery is dreadfully apparent here.” While Rogers did not write about attending a slave auction in Missouri, such sales occurred with regularity in Hannibal and neighboring cities as part of the national slave-trading network. Rogers’s first and only experience of living in a state where slavery was legal brought about a new consciousness; as he remarked during his residence in Missouri, in reference to President Franklin Pierce’s opposition to the abolitionist movement: “I am not much of a politician—I never was. . . .  But I begin to see how things really are now.” The Slave Auction “touched the conscience of a nation,” as a critic later wrote, and became an abolitionist icon due to its display in the office of the National Anti-Slavery Association in New York City and its frequent reproductions in the abolitionist press.

• In what ways can art draw attention to an issue?
• What contemporary connections can you make to The Slave Auction?
• In what ways are contemporary artists utilizing the arts to “touch the conscience of the nation”?

Two men sit below painted portraits of Black leaders. This photograph documents one of St. Louis’s most important community-based art projects: a three-story mural created in 1968 by volunteers from local civil rights groups.

In 1967 a mural celebrating African American achievement, known as The Wall of Respect, was painted in Chicago, sparking a nationwide movement of similar urban murals that powerfully demonstrate how art can advocate for its communities. By 1975 the Chicago mural had inspired more than 1,000 murals across the United States, primarily painted by BIPOC artists.

In 1968 volunteers from St. Louis civil rights groups joined together to paint a Wall of Respect on a three-story building at 2800 Franklin Avenue, near the Pruitt-Igoe housing project and the headquarters of the Black Artists’ Group. Photographer Ken Light documented the wall in 1971.

Organized by Luther Mitchell and painted by Leroy White, Walter Friday, and five other artists whose names we have yet to identify, the wall was intended to “bring on Black awareness and Black consciousness of Black history,” as one community leader announced. It memorialized 16 Black leaders, 7 of whom—Ray Charles, James Baldwin, Jean Baptiste Pointe du Sable, LeRoi Jones, Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. Du Bois, and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King—are pictured in Light’s photograph alongside a version of Marcus Garvey’s exhortation, “Up, you mighty race.” On other parts of the mural not visible in Light’s photograph, there were portraits of Phyllis Wheatley, Muhammad Ali, and St. Louisan Dick Gregory, among others. The wall quickly became, in the words of one supporter, “a gathering place for meetings and performances” and “a symbol of Black achievement and determination.” In Light’s photograph two Black individuals sit in the midst of these heroes, suggesting they also embody Black excellence. But the mural also became a target: it was vandalized at least twice, once just weeks after its creation and again in January 1969. The artists later returned to the wall and restored elements of the portraits that had been defaced. The photograph documents the four-year-old mural scarred by this hatred, with white paint defacing several portraits.  Despite such acts, the mural held a central place in its community for more than a decade before the building on which it was painted fell into disrepair and was demolished. For poet Eugene Redmond, The Wall of Respect was “Built so Blacks can see their (Blackness) tower.”

• This mural was painted on the side of a building in St. Louis. Where else do you see murals?
• What would be important to think about when choosing a site for a mural?
• Why would an artist choose to paint a mural in a public space rather than in a gallery or other art institution?
• In 2011 artist Grace McCammond collaborated with youth from Herbert Hoover Boys and Girls Club to paint The St. Louis Wall of Fame mural on the side of Gramophone, a business located in the Grove neighborhood of St. Louis. Compare this mural with Ken Light’s image of The Wall of Respect.
• Consider the following questions:
• What might the artists’ goals be in painting these murals?
• Why is one still on view and not the other?
• How might these goals align with or differ from those of the community in which each mural is located?

Read more about murals in St. Louis.

Listen to the audio guide stop to learn more about Race Wall, St. Louis, Missouri, 1971.

What do hands and their gestures reveal?

This image of hands originated during the protests after Michael Brown Jr. was shot and killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, on August 9, 2014. Artist Damon Davis, an active member of the Ferguson protest movements, chose seven fellow protesters from diverse backgrounds as his subjects. He photographed just their hands, held up in a gesture that echoes the phrase “hands up, don’t shoot,” heard throughout the uprisings. By titling the project All Hands on Deck, however, Davis transformed a gesture of surrender into one of solidarity, community, and, above all, a call for change.

The photographs were originally printed in large scale and pasted onto boarded-up storefronts during the Ferguson protests. In Davis’s own words: “The project in itself was a protest to change the physical space of the street in the aftermath of the murder of Michael Brown. The boarded-up buildings created a narrative of destruction before anything had even happened, and that fed into the media’s biased portrayal of the protesters. It was a way to weaponize art to create a counternarrative centered on the unity and love I saw every time I went out to protest. It sought to raise the morale of the protest community to continue the long fight.” The print in this resource is part of a series of lithographs created from Davis’s photographs, which were published in a limited edition by Wildwood Press in St. Louis.

Davis’s multidisciplinary practice spans film, music, sculpture, photography, and print media. According to Davis: “My work is rooted in the Black American experience because that is my experience. I am motivated by how I internally process the idea of race and how it has personally affected my life as well as the larger sociopolitical implications of race in America and the world.”

• Consider the question raised at the beginning of the About this Artwork section above: What do hands and their gestures reveal?
• What can we learn about an individual’s story from their hands?

Times Beach, Missouri, suffered one of the nation’s largest environmental disasters. Located about 17 miles southwest of St. Louis along the Meramec River, the town of Times Beach was founded in 1925 as a weekend resort community, and by the 1970s it was home to about 2,500 year-round residents. In 1982 the town was declared uninhabitable after a contractor sprayed the town’s roads with the toxic chemical dioxin to suppress dust. Following its designation as an Environmental Protection Agency Superfund Site, it was entirely evacuated by 1985.

Emmett Gowin included the site in a series of aerial photographs that recorded places where humans have radically altered landscapes, including nuclear test sites, missile silos, coal mines, and more. The Abandoned and Condemned Village of Times Beach, Missouri, which looks east into the early morning light, appears peaceful and serene. Lush foliage and a tidy grid of streets betray no trace of the toxic chemicals lurking there. Following the evacuation, the land appears to be returning to nature. The photograph seems to exemplify Gowin’s astonishment that, as he described: “in spite of all we have done, the earth still offers back so much beauty, so much sustenance. So much of what we need is embodied in it.” For him, such pictures became “an opening through which to seek what we don’t know or already know and should take seriously.” In the case of Times Beach, this responsibility means attending to both the careful management of hazardous materials and the ongoing physical, psychological, social, and economic impacts on its former residents.

• In what ways does learning the story of Times Beach change how you think about Emmet Gowin’s photograph?
• What makes this image successful or not successful as a tool to advocate for environmental concerns?

Sam Fentress, American, born 1955; Times Beach, Missouri, 1986, printed 2020; gelatin silver print; image: 7 7/8 x 11 3/8 inches, sheet: 11 x 14 inches; Saint Louis Art Museum, Gift of Sam and Betsy Fentress 59:2021; photo © Sam Fentress

Sam Fentress’s photograph records the pallets left behind in Times Beach. It is part of a project examining the placement of Christian signs in the landscape. The billboard’s biblical verse references baptism, a ritual of purification by water—a pointed juxtaposition for a place so contaminated by liquids.

Listen to this audio guide stop to learn more about Times Beach.

Visual arts
VA:RE.7B.6 Analyze ways that visual components and cultural associations suggested by images influence ideas, emotions, and actions.
VA:Cn11A.5 Identify how art is used to inform or change the beliefs, values, or behaviors of an individual or a society.
VA:Re7B.4 Analyze components in visual imagery that convey messages.

Social studies
6-8.AH.4.CC.C Analyze material culture to explain a people’s perspective and use of place.
3.PC.1.D.a Explain how the state of Missouri relies on responsible citizen participation, and draw implications for how people should participate.
5.PC.1.D.a Analyze ways in which citizens have effectively voiced opinions, monitored government, and brought about change, both past and present.

English language arts 
Missouri learning standards 

Visual arts
VA:Cn11.1.5 Identify how art is used to inform or change the beliefs, values, or behaviors of an individual or a society.
VA:Cn11.1.8 Distinguish different ways art is used to represent, establish, reinforce, and reflect group identity.
VA:Re7.2.4  a. Analyze components in visual imagery that convey messages.

Social studies
SS.CV.1.1 Explain how all people, not just official leaders, play important roles in a community.
SS.CV.4.3 Describe how people have tried to improve their communities over time.
SS.H.2.6-8.MdC Analyze multiple factors that influenced the perspectives of people during different historical eras.
SS.IS.8.6-8.MdAssess individual and collective capacities to take action to address problems and identify potential outcomes.

English language arts 
Illinois learning standards and instruction