Minnesota’s Taxpayers Paid $10,000 for This Awful Painting Depicting the #NoDAPL Protests

In 2018, the Minnesota Arts Board gave artist Jim Denomie a $10,000 grant to “create a series of large paintings in response to Standing Rock and other contemporary events from a Native American perspective.”

Here’s what Mr. Denomie produced (click for a larger view):

I’ll admit that it’s…interesting. In the same morbid way that a car wreck you slow down to rubberneck is interesting.

It’s like a vision board someone slapped together to represent the popular left wing mythology of what happened during the violent protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline.

What you’re looking at are law enforcement officer standing side-by-side with Klan members, President Donald Trump perpetrating a sexual assault on Lady Justice, and a figure I think is supposed to be former President Barack Obama sitting on a toilet and playing a saxophone.

I’m guessing on that last one. The adoring article from the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports that “Barack Obama is portrayed as a sitting duck” and like the folks at PowerLine the only remotely Obamaesque figure I see is the guy on the toilet.

Not pictured in the painting are the violent political extremists who set construction equipment on fire, instigated confrontations with law enforcement, and left behind tons and tons of garbage and human waste to be cleaned up by other people.

All in the name of obstructing a pipeline carrying an energy product every single one of those protesters used to get to the protest site.

Art is a subjective thing. I understand that. Still, even for the opponents of pipelines who are no doubt this work’s target audience, the imagery is so crude and childish you have to wonder why they’d want it to represent their point of view.

And, beyond that, why on earth should the taxpayers foot the bill for this nonsense?