Eugene Kingman/New York Times Mural

 

RECENT EXCITING NEWS!

A special mural which Eugene Kingman painted in 1948 and was displayed in the New York Times lobby for a number of years, has been donated and shipped to the Joslyn Castle Trust in Omaha Nebraska for restoration. On June 16, 2016 the public was invited to attend a special Unveiling Celebration of this mural at the Omaha Dale Clark Public Library.

While he was Director of the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, one of Eugene Kingman’s most noteworthy commissions was received in 1947, when he was invited by Mr. Arthur Hayes Sulzberger, Sr., CEO of The New York Times, to paint a large mural. In 1948 the mural was displayed in the main lobby of the NY Times Building for over 40 years, and remained there until the late 1980’s, when it was taken down during remodeling. In 2013 Maureen McCann Waldron formed a committee of Omaha art lovers, including Julie Cobb, Amy Trenolone, Julie A. Reilly, and Lyn Wallin Ziegenbein. They began working with the The New York Times and Kingman’s two daughters, Elizabeth Anne Kingman and Mixie Kingman Eddy, to return the mural to Omaha. In 2014 the Times donated the mural to the Joslyn Castle Trust to be restored, and displayed in its new permanent home, the Omaha Public Library in June 2016.

Using his own skills with maps and murals and consulting with a cartographer, Kingman painted a vast and remarkably accurate view of the earth, a challenge since no one in the mid-1940s had ever seen what the earth looked like from space. He added a number of red dots on the map to mark important world cities, like New York, Paris, Tokyo and Omaha, his beloved home at the time. Kingman was helped with the map design by Richard Edes Harrison, the famed map maker from Fortune Magazine. The mural then was installed in the lobby of the New York Times building in 1948, and for the next forty years the art inspired generations of reporters, Times staff members and newsmakers who came to call at the venerable newspaper. The New York Times took down the mural during a lobby renovation in the late 1980s and after years in the Times archives, the mural was donated to the Joslyn Castle Trust in Omaha.

After a community effort to get the mural back to Omaha, it arrived in May 2014. Fortunately many generous donations were received by the Joslyn Castle Trust for the mural’s restoration, Kenneth Bé of the Ford Conservation Center did an amazing job restoring this mural. During a beautiful ceremony orchestrated by Maureen McCann Waldron, it then was unveiled, where it is currently displayed at the Dale Clark Public Library in Omaha, Nebraska.

 

For more background information, read Joslyn Castle’s Brochure, and a delightful New York Times article, written by David Dunlap right during the mural event. Also, a front page article in the Omaha World Herald describes this mural, and an earlier World Herald article announced the painting’s original installation. A YouTube Video captures the entire mural unveiling ceremony.

Facebook at Kingman/New York Times Mural in Omaha
Contact email: KingmanMural@gmail.com or mkeddy@eugenekingman.com

Kenneth Bé of the Ford Conservation Center
led the effort to restore the mural removing decades
of dirt and smoke that had discolored the painting.

 

NOTE the uplifting, timeless quote at the top of this mural, by Susan Coolidge, which Kingman added at the publisher’s request:
“Every day is a fresh beginning…Every morn is the world made new.”

Photo credit: Bob Carlitz