As I am sure everyone has noticed, the Georgia Theatre has been doing some renovations on its building – $60,000 worth of renovations, to be exact. It has added a giant fan inside the theatre and more murals on the back of the building.

Although I am sure the fan on the inside is great for keeping everyone nice and cool during sweaty shows and the back murals are awesome, my question is: What happened to the murals on the side of the building facing The Globe and Clayton Street? No one in Athens, a town that supposedly supports the arts, seems to notice or care.

I can tell you what happened to the mural – it was painted over and then accompanied by a smug “How Do Ya Like Me Now?” message on the marquee in an attempt to make the “building look better,” Georgia Theatre employee Scott Orvold said. The Georgia Theatre painted over a mural that has been a part of downtown for as long as anyone can remember.

Apparently, the building’s image was sullied by the old mural – a tombstone and poem dedicated to a deceased individual. The stick figures were deemed too rudimentary and the piece was “not very attractive,” Orvold said.

I ask, what would have happened when people who found the Lascaux caves in France decided the horses and bulls were too rudimentary to be important? They could have just torn them down and maybe built a lovely condominium there – kind of like what the Georgia Theatre did to the mural. But if those caves would have been torn down or painted over, art would have lost an important part of its history, just as Athens has now lost an important part of its history.

The renovations were not a direct attempt to paint over the mural, according to Orvold. I’m sure there were no Georgia Theatre employees on the sidelines with noisemakers and painted chests yelling, “Yeah, ruin that mural. Show it who’s boss!” But it was not an accident. A bucket of paint did not spill on the mural by mistake. Every stroke that covered up that mural was painted by someone, and it was intentional. It was painted over because none of the employees “knew what it was” and it “didn’t make much sense to anyone,” Orvold said.

My mistake, I wasn’t aware the Georgia Theatre employees were all professional art critics.

- Courtney Smith is a staff writer for The Red & Black.