Forget a Portrait: Rangel Eyes a Mural
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
WASHINGTON — Rep. Charles Rangel of Harlem may have to settle for a pricey portrait to mark his tenure as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, but he disclosed yesterday that he would have chosen a much bigger rendition of himself if he had his way.
“If you’d follow through on the portrait thing, you’d be able to report that Rangel wants a mural,” the veteran lawmaker quipped to reporters yesterday, by way of chastising them for writing about his plans to commission a $64,000 painting of himself instead of more substantive issues.
By tradition, official portraits of all committee chairmen hang on the walls of committee rooms in the Capitol. Just nine months at the helm of Ways and Means, Mr. Rangel, 77, raised eyebrows by asking the Federal Election Commission for permission to use campaign funds to pay the $64,000 his portrait will cost.
Mr. Rangel may have been joking about a mural, but his point was serious. “As I walk around the Capitol,” he said, “the only black folks I see are slaves holding the goddamn horses.”
As the first black chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, he said a mural of him, painted near depictions of slaves on the Capitol’s walls, would send a powerful message about the advances and contributions that blacks have made throughout American history.