CultureNOW - Fort Myers: An Alternative History: Barbara Jo Revelle and United States General Services Administration

Fort Myers: An Alternative History

Incorporating art in U.S. government buildings has been a tradition since 1855, when Congress commissioned Constantino Brumidi to paint frescoes in the committee hearing rooms of the House of Representatives in Washington, D.C. Today, the Public Buildings Service of the General Services Administration or GSA continues this tradition of commissioning fine art for federal buildings nationwide through its Art in Architecture Program, which mandates that up to one-half of one percent (0.5%) of the cost of constructing a federal building be allocated for works of art.

As a matter of public policy, the concept of dedicating a percentage of construction costs for the acquisition of public art dates back to the New Deal and the Treasury Department’s Section of Painting and Sculpture, which was established in 1934. That program set aside approximately one percent of a federal building’s cost for artistic decoration. The program had nothing to do with New Deal welfare relief or make-work initiatives. It merely codified the nation’s longstanding practice of decorating its public buildings. Unfortunately, the concern for public art waned with America’s entry into World War II, and the program was officially disbanded in 1943.

The percent-for-art program reappeared 20 years later after President Kennedy’s Ad Hoc Committee on Government Office Space recommended that fine art be incorporated, where appropriate, in the design of federal buildings. But just three years after the Government Services Administration re-established it in the spring of 1963, the program was again suspended, this time because of budgetary pressures relating to the war in Southeast Asia and widespread apathy on the part of the general public.

Today’s iteration of the federal percent-for-art program takes its impetus from a presidential directive issued by President Richard Nixon on May 16, 1972 that once again espoused “a program for including artworks in new Federal buildings.” Taking its lead from the Nixon directive, the GSA reinstated the Art-in-Architecture policy that September, declaring “a fresh commitment to commission the finest American artists,” and the country has enjoyed a percent-for-art program ever since.

Today, hundreds of GSA-commissioned works of fine art enrich federal buildings in every part of the country.

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Artist
Barbara Jo Revelle

Owner
United States General Services Administration

Dates

Installed, 1999

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Description

Tom Hall, Art Southwest Florida (www.artswfl.com)

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Depicting Chief Billy Bowlegs, a section of stockade of the old fort for which the city is named, a contingent of the 2nd Regiment of the United States Colored Troops that defended the fort from Confederate attack in the southernmost battle of the Civil War, a cattle rancher leaning against one of his steers and the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad locomotive that brought rail service to the fledgling town on February 20, 1904, "Fort Myers: An Alternative History" encapsulates a 46-year period of Fort Myers' early history, one that is denoted by conflict, struggle and even abject shame.

In choosing the subject matter for this mural,” states public artist and photographer Barbara Jo Revelle, “I wanted to represent an alternative history of Fort Myers, not the official one we are accustomed to, the one featuring Thomas Edison, the electrical wizard who for nearly half a century was a winter resident of Fort Myers.” Revelle felt with good cause that Edison and his story, as well as that of his friends and fellow inventors Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone, were characterized adequately in various ways and pieces throughout the community. “In this mural, I wanted to represent some of the lesser known (and perhaps even suppressed) chapters in Fort Myers history, some of the events associated with the actual Fort Myers fort.”

The ignominy of the United States’ deportation of the bedraggled remnants of Seminole nation to reservations in Oklahoma, the fact that Fort Myers was a Union stronghold during the Civil War, the role played by black soldiers in depriving the Confederacy of much needed beef and defending the fort from Confederate attack on February 20, 1865, Fort Myers’ role as a cow town in the last half of the 19th century and the city’s struggles to bring rail service to the town are “crucial in any attempt to characterize Fort Myers’ real history,” Revelle contends. And that represents the guide to appreciating the images Revelle used as content for this mural.

Tom Hall, Art Southwest Florida (www.artswfl.com)

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Location

Federal Building courtyard
2167 First Street
Fort Myers, FL 33901
United States

The mural is located on the eastern wall of the federal courthouse and can be viewed from the courtyard which it shares with Hotel Indigo, HOWL Gallery and Starbucks.

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