Dedication celebrates arts in schools

While the Wayne County Mural Program Competition is prompting new looks at exterior walls, two organizations are dedicating a relatively new interior mural they’d like to spotlight too. 

Richmond Art Museum and Richmond High School Alumni Association are teaming to organize the mural’s dedication at 1 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 17. It’s free and open to the public. The murals spotlight early Richmond and Wayne County industrial history such as Richmond Baking Co., Hills’ Roses, Wayne Works, locally made autos, Gennett Records/Starr Piano Co. and Pennsylvania Railroad Depot. 

RHS alumna Amy Rheinhardt-Jackson created the murals inside McGuire Hall at Richmond High School, 350 Hub Etchison Parkway, Richmond. Guests should use the art museum’s entrance because the museum surrounds the auditorium.

The murals also include nods to the Dille and McGuire Manufacturing Co. push mower that helped make the city the “Lawn Mower Capital of the World,” the Wright Brothers, aviation pioneers who spent part of their youth in Richmond, and C. Francis Jenkins, who invented an early motion picture projector called the Phantoscope. 

The murals also feature several Richmond natives and/or RHS graduates who went on to pursue arts careers, such as Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra’s principal pops conductor Jack Everly, jazz drummers Harold Jones and Jeff Hamilton, soul/rhythm and blues singer Baby Huey, composer George Duning, movie camera operator Jessica Lakoff Cannon and animator Katie Reihman, cartoonist Gaar Williams, film director Norman Foster, ragtime composer May Aufderheide Kaufman, and artist Robert Indiana.

Many of the individuals who are featured in the paintings have been invited to the dedication.

To match the era of McGuire Hall’s construction, Rheinhardt-Jackson painted the murals in a 1930s Works Progress Administration style inspired by artist Thomas Hart Benton. WPA funding covered some of the costs to build RHS and McGuire Memorial Hall.  

McGuire Hall’s dedication took place on Pearl Harbor Day (Dec. 7, 1941), and that significant historical event is represented in the mural. News of the attack on the Hawaiian naval base was announced from the stage during the dedication.  

Rheinhardt-Jackson is a 2001 graduate of Herron School of Art and Design in Indianapolis. She has received multiple awards for her fine art and mural work, including Arts Council of Indianapolis’ Creative Renewal Fellowship Grant. 

In addition to her thoughts about painting the mural, additional speakers will include Richmond Community Schools Superintendent Curtis Wright, RHSAA Director Katie Kitchin and RAM Executive Director Shaun Dingwerth, who will be commenting on the importance of the mural and inclusion of the arts in school curriculum. 

Dingwerth had long wanted to add a WPA-style mural in the auditorium, and an anonymous donor made the oil paintings possible. Rheinhardt-Jackson completed the work in January. 

For more information, visit richmondartmuseum.org/mural/ or call 765-966-0256.