Airport’s Soviet Peace Mural Covered Up

Last week Dan O’Donnell of WISN-AM 1130 radio broke the news that a large ceramic mural covering a wall at Concourse D of Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport, on display since 1990, had been boarded over during the weekend. Also covered was a dedicatory sign that read: “This mural is a gift from the People of Leningrad to the People of Milwaukee.”

Airport officials cited structural concerns with the piece, 36 feet long and 8 feet high, although this is dismissed by Joel Pfeiffer, the organizer of the summer of 1989 “Clay Stomp” events in Milwaukee and Leningrad that used community power to prepare clay murals for exchange between the USA and the Soviet Union. “The mural is not compromised or breaking down. Not in a million years!” he tells Urban Milwaukee. Pfeiffer also scoffs at suggestions that the mural might be subject to vandalism. It is located within a security zone. “Is the TSA (federal Transportation Security Administration) going to allow people to carry in sledgehammers to destroy it?” he asks.

Airport Peace Mural a “Lofty Thought”

“The goal of this whole project is world peace. I know that’s a lofty thought, but it all starts with one step, or one stomp,” Pfeiffer said in a 1993 story. It should be noted that at the mural’s creation Communism ruled much of Europe; the Berlin Wall stood until November 1989. St. Petersburg was Leningrad until its name was restored in 1991. The Hammer and Sickle was the national flag. The nation was the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and not the Russian Federation.

The mural’s underlying theme was that while governments come and go, basic humanity is a constant, and ceramics can last for millennia — the perfect medium for the message. The immense mural includes a single image of an upside-down US flag that has troubled some observers, possibly including airport management. It’s likely that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine provided a convenient excuse to cover up the mural, which the airport had been quietly attempting to deaccession for some time. This is a bitter irony for some, including Julilly Kohler, who was one of many who worked with Pfeiffer organizing the mural project.

Kohler tells Urban Milwaukee:

My thoughts: cancel culture at its worst. It’s a PEACE MURAL and was made by people-to-people connection. That mural represents our connection to the people of Russia and is a reminder that governments are their own personalities, apart from the people who are demonstrating against the war and those tens of thousands who are leaving and escaping the regime crack down. That mural should represent people-to-people — not Putin.

Cost of Clay Spurs Community Involvement

Joel Pfeiffer, a 1972 graduate of UW-La Crosse, was a young high school art teacher who early on learned that it cost much less to ship clay in powdered form than ready-mixed with water. In 1974, he ordered a batch of dry clay for his studio, laid it out on a tarp, hooked up a hose and invited neighbors to help work it into shape. It turned out to be a transformative moment. A 1990 article, “The Politics of Clay: the American-Soviet Mural Project” noted:

The stompers have to lock arms to support each other in this invigorating work or they fall over. Joel discovered that inhibitions are lost, barriers broken, and spoken language unnecessary when people share the joy of this common experience. Participants can’t help but come away with new friends and a feeling of accomplishment.

Since then, Pfeiffer has completed over 100 murals for schools, buildings and public spaces, with “Clay — a Healing Way,” the USA-USSR project, being the largest. It was the subject of an award-winning PBS documentary. Pfeiffer suggested such an event to the United Nations in the late 1980s. Although nothing came of the initial proposal, Pfeiffer was invited to attend the Soviet-American Citizens’ Summit held from February 1-5, 1988, in Alexandria, Virginia. “At this summit,” the 1990 article noted, “approximately 200 American citizens and 100 Soviet citizens worked together to come up with projects that would give people in both countries an opportunity to connect and communicate with each other to promote peace.” The mural was one of those approved.

On July 11th, 1989, some 5,000 people attended the stomp held at Summerfest. The clay was formed into tiles, decorated by the attendees, and sent to Rockdale Union Pottery in Cambridge, Wisconsin, where it was fired and assembled for shipment to the Soviet Union, and eventually installed in a hotel there, since demolished (and the mural as well, it appears.) On July 30th, on the other side of the Iron Curtain, thousands of Soviet citizens and 30 Americans held their stomp at the SS Peter and Paul Fortress on the Neva River, creating the mural that was destined for the airport, and which has now been covered up.

In October 1989, the Soviet mural was transported to Milwaukee and unveiled at the Milwaukee Art Museum. Some 12 Soviet citizens attended the event here; for most it was their first trip abroad. As I recall, only nine of them returned home, with three defecting to the US.

Airport Sought Relocation of Mural Pre-Covid

Although airport management seems to have hastily covered the mural in response to world events, plans have been in the works for some time to find a new home for the mural. Pfeiffer says he was contacted by Harold Mester, spokesperson for the county-owned Mitchell International Airport about relocating it, “about two years ago. Some time before COVID,” he says. According to Pfeiffer, “Meister told me, ‘Airports never stay dormant … we’re going to need the space where your mural is.’ He gave me a list of locations he had scouted — The Milwaukee Art Museum, the Museum of Wisconsin Art — and they didn’t want it. I have heard nothing since.”

Lies Behind Security Checkpoint

Airport security worldwide has changed since 1989 as any traveler can attest. Airport spaces, like Concourse D at MKE, no longer fit the definition of a “large open area inside or in front of a public building, as in an airport or train station.” Today the mural is accessible only to ticketed travelers. Pfeiffer says any new location must be indoors, since the mural is not designed to weather our climate. Kohler suggests the International Arrivals Terminal as a possible spot, but that, too, is not particularly visitor friendly. Perhaps it could find a new home in a different county facility. The Marcia P. Coggs Human Services Center will be renovated, for example. It may have space for the mural.

Pfeiffer would certainly prefer that the mural remain in a public place. He’s learned that the hard way. Another 1980s clay stomp took place on the grounds of the Cass Street School on the Lower East Side. I was in attendance at the event, but kept my shoes on, serving as a witness, and not a participant. It was hoped that the mural would be erected at the school, but funds were not forthcoming for that. Barry Mandel had just developed East Pointe Commons and Marketplace, and had that mural installed at the Pick ‘n Save there, where it remained, even after Mandel sold the complex in 2012. However it did not survive the 2015 purchase by Kroger, Inc. of Roundy’s, the Pick ‘n Save parent. The mural disappeared following an extensive remodeling of the store.