What’s Behind the Tapestries? Notre Dame’s Columbus Murals
Twelve paintings have stood inside Notre Dame’s Main Building since the 1880s. Today, they are hidden behind tapestries.
Why?
This Common Room Deep Dive goes back to Father Edward Sorin and Luigi Gregori, when Christopher Columbus carried a particular meaning for Catholics trying to find their place in American life. We then follow the story through old-time radio’s heroic Columbus, the perspective of the Pokagon Potawatomi, and Father John Jenkins’s decision to cover—but preserve—the murals.
Along the way, we ask a distinctly Chestertonian question: When our understanding of the past…
The skinny
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