"Greetings from Richmond" mural vanishes without warning
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The mural being painted over on Tuesday around 12:30pm. Photo: Courtesy of Alex J. Dimas of crtveambvrt
The "Greetings from Richmond, Virginia" mural on Broad Street is no more.
Why it matters: It was one of the last public displays of the city's 2020 protests, which lasted more than 100 days.
Friction point: No one knows why the mural was taken down on Tuesday.
- Muralists Mickael Broth and Ross Trimmer told Axios they weren't notified and found out on social media.
- The owner of the flower shop whose building housed the mural said she wasn't alerted either, and showed up to see it being painted over.
- That leaves the building owners, Ted and Katie Ukrop, who also own Quirk Hotel down the street.
They didn't respond to multiple requests for comment from Axios.
Catch up quick: The owner of Charm School, an ice cream shop that's now in Forest Hill, commissioned the postcard-style mural in 2016.
- Muralists Broth and Trimmer updated it four years later, with moments from the uprisings filling in the word "Richmond."
- The "M" had "BLM" projected onto Confederate Gen. Robert. E. Lee's now-taken-down monument. The "O" and "N" showed when Richmond police pepper sprayed protesters.
- And the "D" depicted when protesters set a cop car on fire.
Zoom in: The mural had become a photo op for the city for nearly a decade.
- Trimmer acknowledged public art isn't supposed to last, but said this one "meant a lot to a lot of people that were there when things were happening."
- Broth told Axios he's seen people sharing on social media that they felt like the mural was a fixture in their cityscape.
- "And now that's gone."
What we're watching: It's become commonplace for Black Lives Matter murals to fade away, and the latest could be the one in D.C.