GOP official apologizes for writing atop Benton painting

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- The vice chairwoman of the Missouri Republican Party has apologized for using a Thomas Hart Benton mural as a writing surface in the state Capitol.

Vice chairwoman Valinda Freed was photographed last week while she and a man were writing on business cards they were holding up against the 1935-commissioned painting titled, "A Social History of the State of Missouri."

Freed later issued a statement calling it a "thoughtless act."

The photo was taken Wednesday by Dave Marner, managing editor of The Gasconade County Republican newspaper in Owensville.

Marner said Monday he captured Freed and an unidentified man using part of the mural in the House Lounge during the General Assembly's one-day veto session.

He said he posted the photo to Facebook a few days later to share it with photographer friends, and the image quickly spread.

"A lot of people in the community were outraged," he said, adding that artists, art teachers and art conservators have been particularly vocal.

Freed responded Sunday in a written apology, saying what happened was a "completely unplanned and thoughtless act."

Freed didn't identify the man with her in the photo. Neither she nor the man wrote on the artwork itself, only on business cards.

"The Thomas Hart Benton mural, and all the magnificent artwork in the Capitol, are state and national treasures," Freed said.

Benton was at the forefront of the Regionalist art movement with such artists as Grant Wood and John Steuart Curry.

The Missouri-born artist's 1951 painting, "Flood Disaster," depicting a devastating flood in Kansas and Missouri, sold for nearly $1.9 million in 2011.

Benton was the son of a U.S. congressman and the grandnephew of Sen. Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri, a strident advocate of Manifest Destiny.