A mural at the newly-opened ATL Taco in Lenox Square Mall by beloved Atlanta artist Chris Veal is now but a memory captured in photos.
Veal’s work never saw the light of day.
Management of the Buckhead shopping center required ATL Taco owner Shaun Doty to remove the mural ahead of opening because the art was “off-brand” for the “luxury” mall, an insider close to the project this week told What Now Atlanta (WNA) in an email.
“We don’t want to see it go, but [Simon Property Group] said ATL Taco can’t open if [the mural] is there,” they said. “The mural didn’t jive with the mall’s brand/look.”
Simon, Lenox Square’s owner, on several attempts to be reached by WNA did not comment on the report.
“I don’t want to start a war with Lenox or Simon,” the insider who wishes to remain anonymous, said.
“They’ve been mostly very supportive of the changeover. But I was hoping for some positive coverage of the mural. After all, it was an awesome representation of Atlanta and Atliens.”
Doty’s vision for ATL Taco was to honor Atlanta’s “new-found civic pride,” the restaurateur said of the taqueria when WNA first uncovered the concept.
Veal’s mural was meant to do just that.
To view Veal’s work, check out his Instagram by clicking here.
11 Responses
Replace “off-brand” with “black” and “luxury” with “white” and you have the real reason that Simon Property didn’t like it.
Pathetic. They should just relocate the mall to Alpharetta or where ever white flight is going now.
Lol, Lenox is a “luxury” mall Simon?! Please! I’m white and grew up in Buckhead off West Paces Ferry and I personally like the mural. Atlanta is rich in African American history and culture and the mural represent our city quite well and there is no shame in that. I wish African-Americans would stop shopping at Lenox until the mural was reinstalled. Simon Properties wouldn’t be able to get this mural back up fast enough.
To me it’s more an issue over the art itself. As respectfully as i can say it- This looks like it’d be in a High School Assembly room. Nothing wrong with it but it just doesn’t aesthetically seem like a good fit for a mall.
Doty’s energy would be better spent focusing on his food quality and service.
I would contact a lawyer and the NAACP as this is definitely Racism.
OK. So when I go to that mall to eat ATL Taco’s awesome food and celibate their efforts, I will not shop any where else in the mall, and make sure the store owners know why. The mall management may be bigots, but they are nothing but an empty building without their snooty tenants.
Just another reason to stay away from Lenox Square (NOT Mall), which has taken such a nose-dive with Simon. They have no clue how to distinguish Lenox Square
from a mall. That is the problem.
At least they have a better understanding of Phipps Plaza (NOT Mall), but who came up with Legoland?
Having lived around San Diego’s wonderfully imaginative Horton Plaza, and suburban Chicago’s beautiful Oak Brook Center, I felt more than a little let down by Lenox Square after my recent visit. The long linier old school floorplan bore more than passing resemblance to the hulking hasbeen used in the Blues Brothers movie. Owners of this regrettable homage to yesterday’s bad shopping solutions now presume to be art critics??
Good riddance to tacky garbage. The owners of Lenox are trying to maintain what little cache they have. The roaming hordes of hoodrats overran the place long ago, so I choose not to go there. Though I find all malls to be a bit of a bore.
And please stop equating urban ghetto culture with blackness. This is part of the problem with black people falling behind, the acceptance and proliferation of urban ghetto culture as THE definition of blackness.
Die