Photo by: www.du.edu/art/galleries/myhren/news.htm
Who would have guessed that Juliet Capulet and Shakespeare himself have been lurking in Margery Reed Hall?
DU Art!, a volunteer membership organization that supports the DU School of Art and Art History, hosted a panel Sunday about a mural in the Little Theater in Margery Reed Hall that has been hidden for 70 years under five layers of paint – black, purple and several rust colors.
“We were alerted to the possible existence of this mural by DU’s newspaper The Source,” said Dan Jacobs, curator of university art collections. The Source is the university newspaper published by the Office of Communications and Marketing.
In March 2007, conservator Lisa Capano completed a preliminary test of the proscenium and confirmed the mural’s existence.
The mural shows several of Shakespeare’s most famous characters, including Juliet dressed in a gold-colored gown against a background of a garden. King Lear, regal in a golden robe, and Lady Macbeth are thought to be depicted beneath the black paint still left on the mural. Centered directly above the stage, between the black stripes, a gilded portrait of Shakespeare grins down at the audience from its perch.
Artist and DU professor of art John E. Thompson painted the work in 1929. The mural was of both local and national interest: stories about its conception were published in the Denver Post as well as the Christian Science Monitor and the Wall Street Journal.
Thus far, about 40 percent of the mural has slowly emerged as conservators scrupulously remove the layers of paint. What is particularly startling is that the mural was painted over only 13 months after its completion.
Pre-art-conservation majors Stefani Shulte and Nicole Saint have helped conservator Capano unearth the mural.
“The process is really painstakingly slow,” said Capano. “You have to have passion; you have to love what you do.”
Part of what has kept the conservationists working is the desire to honor Thompson’s legacy.
“He brought an international modernism to Colorado painting,” said panelist and local art collector Deb Wadsworth.
The mural’s concealment has also unearthed a 78-year-old dispute.
“When the chairmanship of the Theatre Department changed in the fall of 1930, one of the very first things the new chairman, Walter Sinclair, did was to get rid of this mural,” said Jacobs. “I’m thinking it was probably not a cordial relationship.”
Although no one is sure whether the fight over the mural’s obliteration escalated into anything else, Jacobs and historians have speculated that Sinclair wanted to paint over the mural for two primary reasons:
The theatre setup was somewhat outdated, and Sinclair reportedly wanted to create a new proscenium further downstage to mimic more modern theaters. Sinclair also thought that the Shakespearean imagery was perhaps not modern enough for the plays that were going to be staged, including Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House.”
“Sinclair probably thought the mural itself was visually distracting for the kind of theater they wanted to present,” said panelist Bud Coleman, theater historian and chair of the Theatre Department at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
The Little Theater is currently used as a rehearsal space for theater classes. It may be converted into a lecture hall for the Daniels College of Business, Jacobs said.
Ironically, Thompson’s once forgotten mural may soon inspire business students from the Daniels College of Business to pick up one of Shakespeare’s famous plays.
