Law school defends its right to remove mural depicting slaves being freed

In December, artist Sam Kerson sued the Vermont Law School for threatening to cover a campus mural he painted in 1994 depicting the state’s role in helping freed slaves via the Underground Railroad.

The school has now responded, arguing that although the mural has “beneficent intentions,” some students and faculty members consider it “caricatured and offensive.”

According to the school’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit, the anti-slavery mural has “become a source of discord and distraction at Vermont Law School—an institution whose explicit mission it is to educate students in a diverse community.”

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Kerson, who now lives in Quebec, Canada, has argued his mural, Vermont, The Underground Railroad and Vermont and the Fugitive Slave, is protected by a federal law known as the Visual Artists Rights Act.

In his lawsuit, Kerson argues the 1990 law safeguards artists’ works from “distortion, mutilation, or other modification … which would be prejudicial to [their] honor or reputation” and “protects works of ‘recognized stature’ — including murals in buildings in particular-from intentional or negligent ‘destruction.’”