untitled (mob attacking school bus, Lamar, South Carolina), Harvey Dinnerstein

This painting is an interpretation of an attack on a school bus driving from an interracial school in Lamar, SC. It was painted by Harvey Dinnerstein. The school bus was attacked in a protest against the desegregation of schools in the Deep South. Harvey Dinnerstein was born in New York, 1928. He grew up in a Jewish neighborhood in New York City until he graduated from the High School of Music and Art. He was also a part of the Art Students League. He enrolled in the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia. He stayed there until returning to New York in the early 1950s. He then joined a group of Tyler graduates who went against the dominant modernist styles that many young artists were emulating by painting very realistic pieces. This painting is probably one of the darkest, angriest pieces in the museum. It depicts a school bus tipped over with two white men beating it with what appear to be some form of clubs or farming tools. The windows of the bus are shattered. There is a member of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) riding a horse in the background. The KKK member truly expresses what this painting’s meaning is. This painting is a representation of racism, of a hatred that, in some areas today, has been prevalent since human society began. While my generation has had much less racism toward black people (we even went through most of school with an African American president), it is still a major issue. There are still people who believe that someone can be inferior to someone else because they look different. While this painting is a direct depiction of an act of racism, I believe it can also be seen as a depiction of the hatred of education and science. The hatred of education and science is almost as large of a problem for people today as racism, if not larger. There are many people in the world who are trying to restrict a person’s access to knowledge. Instead of allowing the children of this generation to look at all the knowledge given to them and form their own opinions, some people are trying to force their opinions onto kids. One extreme example of the hatred of education is when a gunman shot a 15 year old girl named Malala Yousafzai in the face with a pistol while she was going to school in the district of Swat, located in Northwest Pakistan. While this painting is very dark and miserable, it reminds us of an important message; no matter how much progress we make, we can always do more. We are never quite out of the woods. We just need to keep walking and keep making the woods we are all stuck in a happier, safer place, for what is the meaning of life but to help people, and make other lives better, not worse?