What happens when art no longer reflects current societal views? This is the focus of Town Destroyer, a film about the New Deal muralist Victor Arnaut off’s 1936 work, “The Life of Washington,” a high school mural that became a media firestorm. Some students, parents, and observers found the depictions of slavery and Native American genocide offensive, demanding that the San Francisco School Board remove or destroy the mural. Identity politics gone off the rails—or a justified blow to a lingering American “colonized mentality”? Filmmakers Alan Snitow and Deborah Kaufman feature students, historians, artists, activists—(and the Living New Deal, which strongly opposed censoring the mural.)

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