CLEVELAND, Ohio – Cleveland City Council has formed a committee to study ways to publicly display art that more accurately reflects the city’s diversity.

The panel – Council members Basheer Jones and Kerry McCormack and Council President Kevin Kelley – is an outgrowth of concerns Jones has raised about a historical mural above the dais of council chambers.

The 28-foot by 22-foot mural, entitled "Where Men and Minerals Meet,” is meant to symbolize the ties between Cleveland as an industrial center and the wealth of natural resources throughout the Great Lakes. Figures represent navigation, hardy mill workers, a chemist who helps perfect products of industry and sailors, deckhands and captains of ore boats -- indispensable to industry.

Nearly all are caucasian.

“Is that a reflection of the city?” Jones asked in an interview with cleveland.com.

Kelley said the goal of the committee is to study ways to display art in council chambers from artists that are reflective of Cleveland’s population, half of which is African American.

That could include setting up some form of rotating displays. Kelley said at this point the committee is just getting started and hasn’t settled on any policies.

The mural that drew Jones’ ire has been a fixture at City Council chambers since 1951. Artist Ivor G. Johns created the painting for Central National Bank of Cleveland in the 1920s.

At the time the painting was dedicated, Henry Turner Bailey, dean of the Cleveland Institute of Art, wrote an essay predicting the scene would be “admired by workers of all types.”

But Jones, an African American and second-year council member, views the painting as a subtle form of discrimination. By not representing all of Cleveland, it perpetuates a system of discrimination, he said.

Jones often raises the issue of race as part of an effort to boost awareness of social issues, such as poverty and unemployment. Institutional racism has exacerbated those issues, he has said.

Jones said he hopes whatever proposals the panel works up can be applied to all of City Hall.

“When people walk into City Hall, they should feel comfortable,” Jones said. When people see good artwork ... it makes them feel good.”