Town Destroyer explores the way we look at art and history of art at a time of racial reckoning. The story focuses on a dispute over historic murals depicting the life of George Washington: slave owner, general, land speculator, President, and a man Seneca leaders called "Town Destoyer" after he ordered their villages destroyed during the Revolutionary War. The murals, at San Francisco's George Washington High School, were painted in 1936 by leftwing artist Victor Arnautoff, a student of Diego Rivera. The murals both praise Washington-and rare for the time-critically depict him overseeing his slaves and directing the bloody seizure of Native lands. Most controversial is a provocative image of a dead Indian-life size, eye-level, and at the center of the school --adapted from case
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