On the top floor of Seattle’s City Hall, just beyond the reception desk and secured doors that mark the mayor’s office, is a long hallway carpeted in a pattern of interlocking squares, all of them differing shades of gray. At one end of this hallway are photographs of the city’s mayors going back a hundred years. At the other end, during the administration of Mayor Ed Murray, was the Mayor’s Gallery.
This gallery was created in 2014, the year that Murray, then 59 years old, took the helm of this city after representing Seattle for 18 years in the state legislature. The gallery’s mission was to showcase emerging local artists of color who lacked art-world representation. Long after Murray resigned in September 2017, just three months shy of completing his first term, the gallery’s final installation remained. Most likely it was overlooked in the surreal chaos of the political moment. Unique in Seattle’s history, Murray’s downfall was brought about by accusations that he had sexually assaulted or abused five young men, three of them young men of color, when he was in his 20s and 30s. For anyone who had the time to stop and ponder it, the exhibit that Murray left behind offered a series of acrylic-on-canvas paintings, most of them focused on young men of color.
The titles of these paintings, already moody, took on a new aspect in the wake of the accusations against Murray. They became a disturbing reminder of the secrets the former mayor was alleged to have carried with him for decades regarding events that, in his repeated telling, never actually occurred. The Delusions of Desire, read the title card for one painting, a whimsical image of a young Black boy. The title of another, also featuring a young Black boy: The Heart That Waits, Wonders.
