The New York Times mural finds a home at the Omaha Central Library

On Wednesday, April 15, 2026, a small crowd gathered in a second-floor computer lab at the new Omaha Central Library, at 72nd and Dodge Streets. They came to rededicate a painting that has traveled a long way: the mural Eugene Kingman painted for The New York Times.

Arthur Hays Sulzberger, publisher of the Times, commissioned the mural in 1946. Kingman painted it in Omaha, at the Joslyn Art Museum, with map help from the cartographer Richard Edes Harrison. It shows the earth as it might be seen from space, years before anyone had seen that view, with a line of poetry by Sarah Chauncey Woolsey across the top: “Every day is a fresh beginning. Every morn is the world made new.” The painting is dated November 1948. It hung in the Times lobby in New York until it was taken down during a remodel in the late 1980s.

In 2014 the Times donated the mural to the Joslyn Castle Trust. Kenneth Bé restored it, and in 2016 it was unveiled at the W. Dale Clark Library downtown. When that library closed, the mural went back into storage at the Joslyn. Joslyn Castle & Gardens looked after it through those years and donated it to the library, which gave it a permanent home.

It now hangs at eye level behind plexiglass, where people can see it up close. Speakers at the dedication included Quinlan Kingman Eddy, Kingman’s grandson; Maureen McCann Waldron; Shannon Gilroy of Heritage Omaha; and Amy Richardson, executive director of the Joslyn Castle. Mixie Kingman Eddy, Kingman’s daughter, was there too. “This is just stunning,” she told the Omaha World-Herald.

We owe this day to many people. Maureen McCann Waldron brought the mural back to Omaha in the first place. Mixie and her late sister, Elizabeth Anne Kingman, did the family’s part, getting it out of storage at the Times. And the Women of the Mural committee, Amy Trenolone, Amy Richardson, Maureen Waldron, Julie Cobb and Lyn Ziegenbein, organized, raised funds and made the library event possible. We are grateful to each of them.

The Omaha World-Herald covered the dedication on its front page on April 17, in a story by Julie Anderson. The room is a working computer lab, so it may sometimes be in use when you visit.

More on the mural and its history is on the major works page, and the press coverage is in the archive.