WASHINGTON — Missouri Rep. William Lacy Clay and members of the Congressional Black Caucus have returned a controversial painting to a Capital complex wall that was removed Friday by a Republican colleague.
Clay also tried to file theft charges against that colleague, Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., although Capitol Police had not indicated to him Tuesday morning whether they will follow through with Clay’s complaint.
“This is really not about a student art competition anymore,” Clay, a St. Louis Democrat, said after he and a handful of colleagues put it back on a wall amidst 400 other winners of a high school art contest sponsored by members of Congress. “It’s about defending the Constitution.”
He said this just after passing Hunter in the tunnel where the painting hangs. Hunter and Clay, who are good friends and whose congressional offices are next door to one another, didn’t speak to each other as they passed.
Hunter, citing 18-year-old artist David Pulphus’ depiction of police as animals, which many have interpreted as pigs, said it was offensive.
Clay said he’d defend the painting through that process as a First Amendment expression of an 18-year-old constituent. “I don’t have a disagreement with that,” he said of the process. “But there is a procedure to follow. You can’t have culture warriors walking around here like they are in charge of something.”
Clay told reporters that he had no opinion on the painting, which police groups and others have criticized as depicting police as hog-like animals. Clay said critics should put themselves in Pulphus’ place, as a teenaged black male, who had witnessed the highly publicized shootings of young black men throughout his teen years including, “in his own community,” the shooting death of black teen Michael Brown by Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson when Pulphus was 16.