The Fight to Save D.C.’s New Deal Sistine Chapel From Trump |
The Fight to Save D.C.’s New Deal Sistine Chapel From Trump
The administration’s government building fire sale has put historic artworks in the Cohen Building in jeopardy. But Rep. Lloyd Doggett and other Democrats are on the case.
The spendthrift ways of President Donald Trump are not confined to asking Congress for more than $200 billion to keep fighting a war in Iran that he can’t figure out how to end, or to pondering Ted Cruz’s plan to reduce capital gains taxation by somewhere between $169 billion and $1 trillion. More quietly, the Trump administration has this week been conducting a fire sale of government buildings in Southwest Washington. These may soon include the Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building, which Grey Brechin of the nonprofit Living New Deal aptly calls “the Sistine Chapel of the New Deal” because of its exquisite frescoes and murals by Ben Shahn, Philip Guston, Seymour Fogel, and Jenne and Ethel Magafan.
If the threat to the Cohen Building strikes a familiar note, perhaps that’s because I’ve written about it previously (here, here, and here). Alternatively, you may have read about it in The New York Times or The Washington Post. (I’m not too fine a person to observe that only the Post credited The New Republic with breaking this story.) Or maybe you heard about it from the million-member lobby group Social Security Works, which has taken on this cause because the Cohen building was built in 1940 to house the (then-spanking-new) Social Security program. Earlier this month, Democratic senators Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Chuck Schumer of New York wrote the GSA’s acting inspector general inquiring “how GSA plans to continue oversight” of the Cohen building murals “once ownership changes hands entirely to private interests.”
Meanwhile, after touring the Cohen building on Wednesday, Democratic Rep. Lloyd Doggett of Texas said, “I really think we need to look at doing more to prevent it from being sold.”
The General Services Administration, the executive-branch agency in charge of most federal real estate, lists 47 government buildings around the country for “accelerated disposition.” The Trump White House has been especially keen to unload four of these, all located in........