Murals and Misunderstandings

‘To make a mural,’ the Mexican artist Diego Rivera once said, ‘is to put the world on a wall.’ Britain, however, has long been uncertain which world it wishes to reveal. In the 1920s and 1930s, the nation briefly imagined its public spaces could hold images of enduring purpose, a vision which ultimately ended with the Festival of Britain in 1951. Artists secured mural commissions through a variety…