The DeKalb Community Mural, by Olivia Gude, 1999

The mural was commissioned by the Northern Illinois University Museum "Museum Without Walls"
project and by the DeKalb Main Street Committee. The mural’s themes center on loss and
restoration of community through community stories and community buildings. Over fifty
people worked on the collaborative design and painting of the project.

The mural is titled, "Its Merits Recommend It..." The phrase is taken from an old barbed wire
fence advertisement. DeKalb is not a place uniquely blessed by nature. It’s in the prairie--flat
and regularly platted. Its river, the Kishwaukee, is sometimes barely a stream. Endless rows of
corn surround it and noisy trains cut across it.

What are the merits that recommend DeKalb? It's a town with industrious people and a history of
industry. People here invented and manufactured. Two innovations that changed the history of the
world--barbed wired and hybridized corn--are intimately associated with the history and growth of
DeKalb.

Olivia Gude, 1999