‘Ken Burns' American Stories’ looks at Benton and his murals

Thomas Hart Benton will re-broadcast on IU PBS-affiliate WTIU Sunday (Aug. 17) at 1 p.m. (Check other PBS affiliates for re-broadcast information). The life and career of the American regionalist painter who taught abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock is explored through a combination of rare archival footage, home movies, the recollections of family, friends and colleagues, and his paintings and murals.

For years, Benton (1889-1975) imagined a vast, panoramic cycle of paintings expressing the "people's" American history; the dream became reality when the artist completed murals for the Indiana display at the 1933 Chicago World's Fair. Despite criticisms at the time that Benton's pioneer woman wasn't pretty enough and the pigs weren't of the best breed, the murals were installed on the Bloomington campus in 1941, following their recovery by then-President Herman B Wells from obscurity in a horse barn at the Indiana State Fairgrounds. Panels of Benton’s Social and Industrial History of Indiana are exhibited at the IU Auditorium, the University Theater and Woodburn Hall in Bloomington. The Woodburn mural has proven controversial over the years because it includes an image of robed members of the Ku Klux Klan burning a cross. It also includes an image of a white nurse taking care of a black child and a white child. Historians say the images represent Benton's effort to display the full array of Indiana history: positive and negative.

That controversy is explored in depth at an IU Bloomington Office of Academic Affairs and Dean of the Faculties Web site, and includes videostreamed interviews with IU historian James Madison and IU art historian Nan Brewer at this Web site:
http://www.indiana.edu/~deanfac/benton/

PBS site:
http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/benton/