Columbus Day in Plainfield
Columbus Day in Plainfield could hardly pass without a comment from Rasheed Abdul-Haqq.
The city activist and commentator on public issues has spent decades trying to get Plainfield officials to sell a valuable city-owned painting by Albert Bierstadt, “The Landing of Columbus at San Salvador,“ and to use the proceeds for a youth center or another community purpose.
The answer from city attorneys over the years has been that the painting was a gift to the city with terms that forbid its sale.
So the painting and another gift, Bierstadt’s “Autumn in the Sierras," still hang in Municipal Court except for occasional loans for touring exhibitions of Bierstadt’s works.
Perhaps in deference to repeated complaints that the Columbus painting, which depicts indigenous people bowing to the arriving Europeans, should not hang behind the judge’s bench in this mainly African-American city, the painting was moved to a side wall after “Autumn in the Sierras” returned from a tour several years ago.
Abdul-Haqq and former city resident Kay Cotignola faced off about the paintings many times. Cotignola came to a City Council meeting in 1992 wearing a quincentennial commemorative T-shirt to advocate for Italians’ pride in the holiday.
Abdul-Haqq believes the city could realize millions from sale of the Bierstadts and refuses to back down.
“I’m still focused on the same thing,” he said Monday (Oct. 10, 2005).
The paintings have had no recent appraisal but could be worth millions, he said.
Nowadays, Columbus Day is only revered as a shopping occasion, he said.
And as for the display of the paintings in the Municipal Court, he said, “They cannot be fully appreciated.“
Abdul-Haqq says people do not even notice the paintings any more.
Visitors to the court don’t even know the story of the paintings, he said.
--Bernice Paglia
The city activist and commentator on public issues has spent decades trying to get Plainfield officials to sell a valuable city-owned painting by Albert Bierstadt, “The Landing of Columbus at San Salvador,“ and to use the proceeds for a youth center or another community purpose.
The answer from city attorneys over the years has been that the painting was a gift to the city with terms that forbid its sale.
So the painting and another gift, Bierstadt’s “Autumn in the Sierras," still hang in Municipal Court except for occasional loans for touring exhibitions of Bierstadt’s works.
Perhaps in deference to repeated complaints that the Columbus painting, which depicts indigenous people bowing to the arriving Europeans, should not hang behind the judge’s bench in this mainly African-American city, the painting was moved to a side wall after “Autumn in the Sierras” returned from a tour several years ago.
Abdul-Haqq and former city resident Kay Cotignola faced off about the paintings many times. Cotignola came to a City Council meeting in 1992 wearing a quincentennial commemorative T-shirt to advocate for Italians’ pride in the holiday.
Abdul-Haqq believes the city could realize millions from sale of the Bierstadts and refuses to back down.
“I’m still focused on the same thing,” he said Monday (Oct. 10, 2005).
The paintings have had no recent appraisal but could be worth millions, he said.
Nowadays, Columbus Day is only revered as a shopping occasion, he said.
And as for the display of the paintings in the Municipal Court, he said, “They cannot be fully appreciated.“
Abdul-Haqq says people do not even notice the paintings any more.
Visitors to the court don’t even know the story of the paintings, he said.
--Bernice Paglia
posted by Bernice at 8:55 PM
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