Facing off on free speech and a controversial painting that some Republicans criticized as anti-police, members of the Congressional Black Caucus will hold an event on Tuesday morning to re-hang the painting that Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter took down last week, setting off a potential political game of musical chairs.
The controversy over the issue came up at a closed door House Republican conference meeting Friday, according to GOP sources in the meeting.
Each member of Congress can select a painting by a constituent to hang in the Cannon tunnel. Hunter and other House Republicans took issue with the one from Clay’s district that had some police depicted as pigs.
The painting, by high school student David Pulphus, won Democratic Rep. William Lacy Clay’s congressional art competition in May 2016.
“The painting portrays a colorful landscape of symbolic characters representing social injustice, the tragic events in Ferguson, Missouri, and the lingering elements of inequality in modern American society,” Clay’s office wrote in a news release at the time.
But the law enforcement community and several members of Congress took issue with the artwork after its existence was reported by Independent Journal Review.
Hunter personally unscrewed the painting from its spot in the Cannon tunnel and delivered it to Clay’s office Friday, but his office acknowledged at the time that it may not stay there.
“There’s nothing appropriate about a painting that depicts police officers at pigs. Representative Hunter removed the painting and returned it, but as easy as it came down — it can go back up,” the congressman’s chief of staff Joe Kasper wrote in an email Friday, noting an overwhelmingly positive reaction for its removal from law enforcement, including Capitol Hill police officers.