Sharon Kilfoy painted 11 murals at Centro Hispano. Several of them, including the “Volcano Room” above, were not preserved during the organization’s renovation.
On Oct. 15, Centro Hispano opened its doors after closing for a two-week renovation and revealed a beautiful, functional new space. The nonprofit, which was founded in 1983 and has operated since 2006 at 810 Badger Road, was treated to an interior makeover valued at more than $600,000 courtesy of Madison’s branch of Design for a Difference, a national initiative that connects interior designers to local organizations.
Crews from local design company Floor360 knocked down walls, repainted the interior and installed new floors throughout the 18,000-square-foot building. They also provided new furniture, added executive office space and updated the facility’s kitchen. Centro Hispano Executive Director Karen Menendez Coller is ecstatic about the changes and says the community is too. But the renovation effort destroyed several murals painted by artist Sharon Kilfoy with help from local youth, and Kilfoy is mourning the loss of her art. “It’s pretty devastating,” says Kilfoy, who learned that her work was removed when she saw photos of the renovation on social media. “So much of the community worked on these murals.”
Kilfoy, who painted 11 murals for the nonprofit between 2008 and 2014, knew that Centro was undergoing renovations, but she believed that her artwork would be preserved. She shared with Isthmus emails she received before the remodel from Coller, who wrote: “The murals will STAY!! I can’t imagine them being removed, they are a part of our identify.” Coller declined to be interviewed about the murals, but she wrote an opinion piece on Madison365 last week addressing social media comments from Kilfoy’s supporters.
“While our staff and our community has celebrated, we were pulled back by some who think they know the true definition of what we should be as an organization, what should be included in our building [and] what a Latino represents,” she wrote. “Let me be clear, the loudest voices do not always represent our community.”
Coller frames the dispute as a cultural and racial issue, going on to say that many in Madison have a lot to learn about “cultural appropriation” and “what it means to allow communities of color to lead the way.”
But the dispute also raises a question about best practices when it comes to decommissioning and altering works of art. One of Kilfoy’s murals was reworked by Floor360’s designers — a move Kilfoy considers theft of her intellectual property. “I don’t want to take them to court, but I do think the pastiche of my work should come down,” says Kilfoy, who has talked to a copyright lawyer about the situation and is considering retaining services. “I want to put a message out there that this is not an okay thing to do to artists.”
Bob Tobe, CEO of Floor360, says Centro Hispano leadership and staff worked closely with designers in planning every aspect of the new space — which included direction on “what murals [Centro] wanted to save, which ones they thought could be adjusted, and which ones could be removed or designed around.” Tobe says he’s been “blown away” by negative social media comments about the removal of the art. “We’re very, very, very sensitive to the whole process,” he says. “The only thing we’re trying to do is help and uplift.”
While Kilfoy’s murals were not technically public art, they existed within an important community space and were created using tens of thousands of dollars in funding from local grants, including American Girl’s Fund for Children. “It’s always sad when art disappears,” says Tom Linfield of the Madison Community Foundation. “You hate to see any art destroyed, but being able to have them up for 10 years is an extraordinary opportunity for any artist. I feel deeply for both sides.”
Linfield, a practicing artist as well as an arts funder, sees the situation as a learning opportunity for the local arts community. Going forward, he suggests organizations that partner with artists emphasize transparency and establish clear expectations about how long a piece will be displayed and what will happen when it’s time for a piece to come down. He draws a parallel to the philanthropic world, where donors get naming rights to a building for a certain number of years.
“I can’t imagine how one would create a contract that says, ‘You may never change this,’ but maybe the artist deserves to have a minimum time commitment,” he says. “And the organization deserves to have an understanding of what exactly should happen.”