It was the feel-bad story of the summer: this August, real estate developer Zyyo had put new drywall over a mural by the great David Wojnarowicz (1954-1992) at 600 East Main Street in Louisville, Kentucky. Created for the 1985 exhibition “The Missing Children Show,” the work was only rediscovered by accident in 2022. The work will be preserved, but Zyyo has re-covered it to make way for a gym. We caught up with architect Moseley Putney to hear more about his experience of rediscovering it in 2022, and the implications of its being hidden once again.
When you first cracked open the drywall and saw the mural again after decades, what memories of 1985 and “The Missing Children Show” came rushing back to you? You’ve described the moment of rediscovery as being like unsealing “Tutankhamen’s tomb.” What did it feel like to suddenly find yourself holding a piece of art history in your hands, hidden in your own city?
In retrospect, it was probably more like Lascaux. As fantastic as Tut’s treasure must be, true art is not borne of vanity, dripping jewels and gold death masks commissioned by enslaved artisans for royal privilege. “The Missing Children Show” was sweatier, dirtier, about the message and fully visceral, callous-handed passion and creation with a background of survival and horror. I think it felt more like that, like maybe the water was rising and the entrance was already blocked. Once it receded, the discovery was made, the wall opened and the memory revisited with the message as poignant as the day four decades later.
When I heard that there was “…some kind of painting behind the walls,” I remembered exactly what it had to be. I attended Potter Coe’s “The Missing Children Show” in 1985 but didn’t have a recollection of exactly what was painted or where or by whom until cracking through the drywall. Seeing the iPhone-lit imagery and the richness of color through a small hole brought back the sense of being 40 years younger and the simplicity of those pre-digitized analog days. Getting a first glimpse of David’s long-forgotten work was a unique moment in my own life, a weird two-way mirror, a sense of looking out instead of in, seeing myself in the future from 1985.
You were there at the original exhibition in 1985. How did that night, the people involved, and David Wojnarowicz’s presence strike you at the time?
I remember meeting David, he was a tall and visually striking guy, very serious, and at the time, I suppose, not feeling well. There was no small talk, not with me anyway. I met a few of the other artists, and I’m pretty sure I met Judy Glanzman, as she was close to Potter. The event was in a rough and dirty old structure; it felt important and was weirdly eclectic due to the band of New York City’s most outrageous avant-garde art warriors rolling into town, putting up edgy art and playing music with a seriousness and passion that was infectious if not slightly intimidating.
Never lose sight of what this show was about. Ann Gotlib’s disappearance was a horror. It’s seemingly obscene and in a way confusing to build an event around missing kids, the spirit of the gallery was respectfully somber as I recall. Reverent, but there was a ferocity of audaciousness for even having to plead awareness to such a terrible issue. These New York folks put up on walls what our city had been bleeding and grieving through for months. What is more horrific than a missing child? The memory of the incessant news cycle back in 1985 brought forth surprising emotions… where was Ann, is she somehow alive, what really happened? As a parent of three young adults, sadness wells up when I revisit these memories in a way I then, as a childless young man beginning my career, could never have predicted.
What was your relationship with Potter Coe, and how did his vision for the show—and for Louisville—shape your own understanding of what art could do in the city?
The reveal of this art now would probably do more for this city than it did then. Because of Woj’s career? Or because of honoring Ann Gotlib? Louisville has struggled to be dialed in to world events, wrapped up so in its simple and safe cocoon of complacency. I’m not sure how much that has changed.
Potter recently passed away, but not before we connected about the work. He was a few years older than me, I knew him through mutual friends. Potter introduced me to my parenting partner, my daughter’s mother, at a formal event around 1996. For this I’m eternally grateful, we all have stayed in touch over the years. Potter was a good painter, working along a Diebenkorn-esque track, an ambitious and creative businessman, and a uniquely complex and gentle soul.
At the time, I saw his creation of the show as an extraordinary thing that I didn’t quite understand, bringing these incredibly creative folks in from New York to raise awareness about child abuse and trafficking in Kentucky in 1985. It was some scary stuff to know how to process being in the gallery space at the event, and Potter was courageous and always one to push boundaries and so he did with the show.
Louisville has had a long and strong theater scene, great orchestra and opera for years, lots of new music in the punk and New Wave days came from folks here, and visual arts as well… but visual arts less so than the others. Most great painters, sculptors, architects found better business opportunities in bigger markets elsewhere I believe, hence Potter’s exodus to New York and his opening of Grandin Gallery.
The great new and significant publicly available art arrived in the early 1980s courtesy of Wendell Cherry, founder of Humana, who was a friend and a mentor of sorts to Potter. Wendell flooded this city with big art, having won the competition for the design architect Michael Graves created Humana’s Postmodern-styled headquarters here (considered the pinnacle of Postmodernism by many, a movement that for the most part dabbled in pastiche and ornament of lesser materials, not so the Humana structure, assembled of granite, marble, bronze in a scale that respected the existing historic structures while somewhat fantastically, and cleverly, busting the scale simultaneously… it’s quite exquisite). Wendell made sure people in Louisville understood that architecture, music, all art, matters in civic life… in life overall. I think his genius played a strong role in Potter’s inspiration both in business and art.
At one point, you went “rogue” to reach out to Wojnarowicz’s circle when you feared the mural might be lost again. What compelled you to take that step, and what did you hope would happen?
The area the building is in, “NuLu,” is near downtown and undergoing great new growth. Indeed, that is exactly what the building owner and his New York/Louisville-based development company are working on (they are a catalyst for this new growth). They are one of the strongest and most well-known players in the market. The thing is, they do great stuff, have vision, are young, financially strong, and are garnering kudos for taking on tough projects and getting them done. But my seeing the value of a real gallery of international interest rising from the catacombs in NuLu on the company’s grounds and the rich story that reignites Louisville’s interest in its own history, how it could benefit the Children’s Defense Fund and other organizations, how it could benefit Woj’s foundation and all the satellite associations and allies made my going rogue nothing compared to the rogue act of directing a $20-an-hour painter to cover the work in black. I consider the company friends; we just didn’t see eye to eye on this issue. I couldn’t afford, culturally and personally, to let the work be destroyed. I no longer work there.
You’ve spoken about your disagreements with the developers over the mural’s fate. What did those conversations reveal to you about the tension between preservation, profit, and public memory?
I’m not sure we actively “disagreed” as I knew I really had no dog in the fight. My art preservation point of view was tolerated somewhat, and by contacting the New York folks I created a rift between my boss, whom I did and do consider a friend, and myself. I get it, the need to have the space in the old lithography building generating income is real when borrowed construction money is generating real pressure.
I truly believe that goodwill generated by opening the space as a public gallery featuring Woj’s work, with private money, would return to the company tenfold with substantial good international press for the “Developer Who Did The Right Thing”… that it isn’t all about money. These guys do really interesting work and have saved, preserved, renovated, and repurposed some significant structures at considerable cost. If there is a time in the future when a gallery comes into being and the work is revealed (they resealed the work with care and sensitivity to its value, I believe), they will be heralded perhaps even more enthusiastically than if they had already made the gallery move initially.
As an architect and preservationist, I’m constantly astounded (and disgusted) by the razing of structures of historic significance, be they spectacular or mundane. Buildings are the shells of our existence and house public and private memories, representing history, craftsmanship, spirit of place, and utility. Erasing historic edifices and art is a type of “cultural cleansing” that shouldn’t be tolerated or allowed. City preservation vision is often the responsibility of the powers that be, the mayor, etc. All too often, business is put in front of heritage, which ultimately proves deleterious to both. TIFs (Tax Increment Financing) and other incentives are often granted to out-of-town developers who couldn’t care less about historic content in cities that are not their own.
Architectural and art preservation, as with good and thoughtful new architecture, is good business, far better than the carpet-bombing mentality borne of urban renewal that astonishingly persists to this day. I shudder to think what utter hell the current administration in D.C. will rain down on our ancestral architectural and diverse cultural resources as they are doing with law and social order through hate and division… But I digress. I give kudos to Zyyo for preserving Woj’s work, even if, understandably, somewhat begrudgingly. They are leaving a window for doing the right thing in the future, however far away that may be.
Looking ahead, what do you hope this rediscovery—and the ongoing debate around it—might mean for Louisville’s art community, and for the city’s relationship to its own hidden histories?
I believe there may be an effort underway to engage the developer in conversations to create a path that will allow the work to be viewed and hopefully the gallery vision to be realized in some form or another in the relatively near future. [Off the record… I can give you some names to call.] There are myriad artists practicing in Louisville, really good ones, brilliant ones, influential ones, yet very few seem to be engaged or even aware of the Woj painting issue, as it is, for the most part, a semi-private affair on private property. I know of no local media coverage.
“Hidden histories”…interesting phrase. We’re the northernmost big southern town, Underground Railroad territory, Sold Down the River territory. Louis met Clark here in Louisville, recruited the team from Louisville and southern Indiana adventurers seeking to explore the mysterious and unknown West. Jefferson’s Voyage of Discovery (initiated by his Louisiana Purchase and mastodon bones discovered in this region) began here (although they wintered in St. Louis, and Missouri makes the same claim… erroneously). John James Audubon lived here for a while, as did Edison. The GOAT is from here.
Louisville was the wild West until rail jumped to California, and indeed it was dangerous to go to the outhouse until around 1805 lest one lose one’s head to a rightfully embittered aborigine. We’re settled here because of the falls, the only falls for the entire 600-plus miles of the Ohio River. Below, in the riffling shallows, buffalo traces and hunter paths leading to the Dark and Bloody Ground that at the time was Virginia date back untold millennia.
The strength and power of Woj’s work here, as well as the others, ironically evoked the inner dangers of this region’s place in history—the broken and terrifying limits beyond civilized living, if not in place, then certainly in mind. Today, the dangers are equally real, physically, socially and politically, not just internally. A child lost forever is a horrendously familiar story worldwide, still, perhaps made more poignant at this boundary in space and through time by Potter Coe’s “The Missing Children’s Show” 40 years ago, as well as Woj’s own painfully sad personal story that so consistently informed his work. Woj reemerged from that cracked wall that day, an entombed spirit-legend revealed. This lost work joins the legion of appreciation the world has shown for his other work. Sealed back into obscurity or not, it’s now known, documented, and recorded, and will never again be lost.