Mt. Sinai Home for Chronic Invalids (former) Mural – Los Angeles CA

Description

In 1937, Myer Shaffer painted a mural, “The Elder in Relation to Society,” for the Mt. Sinai Home for Chronic Invalids in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles, CA. The 400 square foot mural received funding from the WPA Federal Art Project (FAP).

“Shaffer used his artwork to draw attention to social crisis, this time that of eldercare. He explained in the Hollywood Citizen-News that he placed biblical figures Judas Maccabee and King David in the foreground to illustrate ‘that age does not incapacitate.’ Yet the mural delivered a much stronger social message; in the upper detail of the fresco Shaffer painted five figures depicting different racial and ethnic groups and a sixth figure representing death. The mural implied that since age and death did not discriminate perhaps people should not either. A writer for the Jewish Community Press noted that the mural extended ‘a plea for united understanding and a closer brotherhood of the white, black and yellow races.’ Shaffer’s message of universal brotherly love was apparently too much for the convalescent hospital because several months later the administration whitewashed the mural. Shaffer sued the facility for $100,000, but it is unclear how the suit was resolved” (Schrank, p. 447).

In 1938, another of Shaffer’s FAP murals, “The Social Aspects of Tuberculosis” (1936), at the Los Angeles Tubercular Sanatorium (today’s City of Hope) in Duarte, CA, was whitewashed. “Shaffer credited the Federal Arts Project with encouraging public art in the city but kept track in the Jewish Community Press of the increasing number of murals painted over by the Board of Education and other local authorities. […] Wincing at Los Angeles’ regional provincialism, Shaffer wrote that a ‘fallacy that we find in numerous murals is the disregard of the truth of historic events. A mural should be as powerful and moving as a symphony…., not a pretty melody in paint'” (Schrank p. 447).