Behind the Surface: Conserving WPA Murals

Get an intimate look at the decades-long conservation and restoration of Abram Champanier's Alice Mural, a major New Deal–era mural commissioned through the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project. This discussion will trace the mural’s journey from the children's ward at Gouverneur Hospital—where it brought color, fantasy, and joy to a space dedicated to healing—to its return to public view in Another Wonderland: Abram Champanier's Alice Mural at the Museum of the City of New York. 

With opening remarks by Rick Luftglass, Executive Director of the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund, the conversation will be moderated by Barbara Haskell, curator and historian of early twentieth-century American art at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Lilly Tuttle, Curator at the Museum of the City of New York, Larissa W. Trinder, Assistant Vice President of NYC Health + Hospitals Arts in Medicine, and Foreground Conservation will discuss the often-invisible labor that sustains public art over time and what it means to restore a work that was always, at its core, an argument for the necessity of art in human life. 

This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.