Dangers of the Mail

The mural was commissioned through the Section of Fine Arts in 1935 in a New Deal art project designed to incorporate large works of art in the building. The mural was one of several specified to be "Romantic Subject Matter in the History of the Post" commissioned for the newly constructed headquarters of the Post Office Department. Frank Mechau was recruited for the program by Edward Rowan, then assistant director of the section. Dangers of the Mail was completed in 1937, installed on the fifth floor of the Post Office Department Building, and unveiled in September. == Description ==

Dangers of the Mail portrays the ambush and violent attack by Native Americans on a mail stagecoach and its occupants. Art historian Karal Ann Marling describes the figures of the women as "clearly female, to be sure, thanks to volumetric mass". Along with the main painting, there are five vignettes below the main painting and simpler designs along the top and side borders. The mural is . == Objections ==

In March 1937, before it had been unveiled, images appeared in a two-page spread in Time, which drew "thousands of letters of protest" of the nudity and criticism for historical inaccuracies. A 2005 complaint, filed on behalf of EPA employees regarding six murals in what was then called the Ariel Rios Federal Building, asserted that the various murals depicted Native Americans in a racist manner. As the controversy wore on, Dangers of the Mail became the primary issue (most of the original complaints were about the Dangers of the Mail, another Mechau mural entitled Pony Express, and Ward Lockwood's Opening of the Southwest and Consolidation of the West. In 2007, the General Services Administration, which is responsible for the management of federal buildings in the United States, agreed to install a movable screen in front of Dangers of the Mail and to "incorporate revised interpretative materials to address the history of the art and the controversy associated with the mural". A "comprehensive interpretive program" was developed for all 22 murals in the building, including Mechau's Dangers of the Mail and Pony Express, Lockwood's Opening of the Southwest and Consolidation of the West, William C. Palmer's Covered Wagon Attacked by Indians, and Karl R. Free's French Huguenots in Florida, which were the ones named in the filing. == Access for viewing ==

Researcher Jessy Ohl recounts learning of the mural's existence through a colleague at the EPA who told of "a ritualistic practice of viewing the painting for new members of the agency". As of 2019, access for viewing requires scheduling an appointment with a General Services Administration employee. == Critical analysis ==

In 1982 art historian Marling pointed out that the women in the bottom right of the painting were the only figures in the painting without faces or clothing and that they "(existed) solely to be preyed upon and maimed". In 2015, the Colorado Springs Business Journal called it possibly "the nation's most dangerous painting". In 2010 Sandra Starr, writing in Smithsonian's American Indian magazine, called it "easily the most controversial of all these (images of Native Americans in New Deal commissioned post office art)". Ohl, in 2019, wrote, "Far from reflecting an impartial or even faintly recorded 'History of the Post', Dangers of the Mail instead condenses titillating imagery of Western expansion epitomized in early American literature, film, television, and theatrical performance." == See also ==