Art Is a Political Flashpoint in Maine

March 24, 2011 by PaulM Posted in Culture, Current Events, History, Lowell, Politics 2 Comments

We’re going down a bad road when politicians like the Maine governor start removing images of labor history like the mural in the Maine state Department of Labor office in Augusta that he ordered to be removed. Read the article from the Lewiston, Me., newspaper, the Sun Journal here. The Governor’s office spokesman said unnamed business owners had said the mural was “hostile to business.”

Mural removal

The mural was erected in 2008 following a jury selection by the Maine Arts Commission and a $60,000 federal grant. Judy Taylor, the artist from Seal Cove, said Tuesday that her piece was never meant to be political, simply a depiction of Maine’s labor history. The 11-panel piece depicts several moments, including the 1937 shoe mill strike in Auburn and Lewiston, “Rosie the Riveter” at Bath Iron Works, and the paper mill workers’ strike of 1986 in Jay.

2 Responses to Art Is a Political Flashpoint in Maine

  1. Bob Forrant says:

    A new low, which seems to get lower still by the day. For me this is much like deciding to move military veterans photos from a public space. Labor history is replete with heroic personages who helped break a limitation on how workers were treated or raised up the notion that in work there was (is) honor. SO, does the brainiac governor of Maine want to find out what would’ve happened to the economy of maine if there were no working people there? This phony war on workers and their unions as a substitute for dealing with the absolute horror show our economy is really in, is destructive to the social fabric and makes it very difficult to understand how we pull together as a country to get the economy moving again and decent jobs created. The Maine governor is a petty bully at best!

  2. Marie Louise St.Onge says:

    We all knew Paul LePage was not up to the task of seving as Governor of the State of Maine months before he was elected. Was anyone listening to or watching those debates? Now, sadly, the evidence mounts and in terribly rude, hurtful, and consequential ways. He is crafting a State that may be his, and it may be what those 19% of Maine voters dreamed and voted for. But he is not my Governor.