This is the story of a cover-up, complete with a happy ending.
The concealment in this case was the 2000 decision by the State Education Department to curtain off the massive mural that for almost 50 years had decorated the curved wall at the back of the stage in Chancellors Hall, the ornate auditorium at the east end of SED's Washington Avenue headquarters.
The mural, which I laid eyes on for the first time on Thursday, is a wonder: Larger than many movie screens — 18 feet high, almost 30 feet long — it's nothing less than a visual allegory for the young nation.
In the center, robed women embody the 34 states and the federal government. On the left, immigrants and even the zombified dead rise up to join the national endeavor. To learn the reason why the painting has been shut away for more than a decade, look to the right side of the canvas: Slaves and Indians are emerging from the darkness; a slave in a loincloth is rising up with a two-handed assist from a bearded white figure.
The work has worn many titles, from "Grand Centennial Painting" to the rather generic "The United States of America." It was commissioned by department store magnate Alexander T. Stewart from the French artist Adolphe Yvon, who had built his career on similarly monumental images of the Napoleonic Wars. An initial version of the painting, a mere five feet across, dates to 1858, which explains why martyr-to-be Abraham Lincoln isn't included. That version, titled "Genius of America," made its way to the St. Louis Art Museum.
Stewart was reported to have paid $100,000, a staggering sum in 1870. For a contemporary comparison: After the painting was complete, Stewart discovered that his mansion lacked a wall big enough to properly display it — a classic problem for the 1 percenters of yesteryear. So in 1876, it was sent to Saratoga Springs to adorn the ballroom of another Stewart acquisition, the Grand Union Hotel, where its enormity fit perfectly into Stewart's scheme to expand the summer resort into the world's largest hotel.
It departed in the fall of 1952, just before the crumbling Grand Union was demolished. The contractors who handled the teardown, Siegel Brothers, made the painting a gift to the State Education Department. Following an extensive restoration, it took up its current residence in Chancellors Hall in 1953.
The work hung as successive generations of schoolchildren and education officials trooped through the State Ed building, which in those days housed the state library and museum. With the construction of the Empire State Plaza in the early 1970s, the museum moved to its current location at the opposite end of the plaza. Yvon's painting remained.
But State Ed wasn't a museum anymore, it was a workplace — and images of half-naked slaves being hoisted up by the white man aren't the sort of interior decoration preferred in CubicleLand.
At the same time, State Ed was trying to make up for lost time by diversifying its personnel as part of a larger push for enhanced multiculturalism. One unintended consequence: African-American voices at SED began to complain about the mural. And so, quietly, the curtain was drawn.
In recent years, Chancellors Hall is deserted for most of the year, its stage empty except for the occasional concert or employee Zumba class.
I first heard about the mural during the planning for the centennial of the State Ed Building, and let their press office know that I was interested in writing about it as a sort of flip side to this week's exhibition of one of the original copies of the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which will be on display at the State Museum on Friday and Saturday.
As my deadline approached, top officials decided to take another look at the painting. (This isn't boasting — and I feel like a schmuck for not nudging them harder before last month's three-day centennial open house.)
The most important opinion, in more ways than one, was that of John King, the state's first African-American education commissioner.
"From my perspective as a former high school history teacher, I tend to see historical artifacts as teaching tools," he said in an interview Friday, a few days after getting his own first look.
So in the weeks ahead, State Museum director Mark Schaming and SED officials will begin to plan a new way to exhibit the painting, including the sort of signage and supplementary material that has improved the Capitol's Hall of Governors.
To paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, speaking just seven years before the date at the bottom of Yvon's commission: It is altogether fitting and proper that State Ed should do this. But the department should do more, by opening up its gorgeous building to the public in a much more comprehensive way.
The tours planned for the centennial filled up so quickly that more were added; those additional tours are now fully booked. One thing Alexander Stewart and Alphonse Yvon understood was that the customer is always right. State Ed's customers — taxpayers — clearly relish a chance to explore the palace of education.
This story of a coverup concludes as the story of a teachable moment.
cseiler@timesunion.com • 518-454-5619