Life of Washington

Life of Washington is the name of a set of thirteen murals painted by Victor Arnautoff located in San Francisco's George Washington High School. As indicated by their title, they depict George Washington at various real and imagined points in his life. The work was the largest mural by a single artist that the WPA funded.
Student activists sought to remove the mural in the 1960s and 1970s due to its depiction of slavery and Native Americans. Members of the Black Panther Party demanded that the mural be destroyed and that a Black artist be hired to paint the replacement, recommending painter Dewey Crumpler for the job. The San Francisco Arts Commission and the San Francisco Board of Education hired Crumpler to paint a "response mural" that depicted the historic struggles of people of color in America but did not destroy the Washington mural.
In June 2019, the San Francisco Unified School District voted unanimously to paint over all thirteen panels. The board cited student discomfort at the violence depicted in the murals, highlighting two panels in particular. Supporters in favor of preserving the murals say that it presents an alternative to sanitized depictions of American history, as it depicts George Washington walking over the corpse of a Native Americans and presents him with slaves on his estate, Mount Vernon. Arnautoff was "[...] a well known radical" and communist, and he painted other murals considered by some to be controversial. The decision was subsequently reversed in August 2019, with 4 to 3 vote to cover up the mural with a tarp instead.