June 16, 2016

The restored Times mural is unveiled in Omaha

After decades rolled up in storage, Kingman's New York Times mural was restored and unveiled at Omaha's W. Dale Clark Library on June 16, 2016.

Looking down into the library atrium as a white cloth is pulled away from the mural hanging above the main floor.

On the evening of June 16, 2016, a white cloth was pulled away above the atrium of the W. Dale Clark Library in downtown Omaha, and Eugene Kingman’s New York Times mural was back on public view for the first time in decades.

The mural had a long road home. Arthur Hays Sulzberger, publisher of The New York Times, commissioned it in 1946. Kingman, about to become director of the Joslyn Art Museum, painted it in Omaha at the Joslyn, working with the cartographer Richard Edes Harrison on the map. It shows the earth as it might be seen from space, under a line of poetry by Sarah Chauncey Woolsey that Sulzberger asked for: “Every day is a fresh beginning. Every morn is the world made new.” It hung in the Times lobby from 1948 until the late 1980s, when it came down during a remodel.

In 2013 a group of Omaha art lovers led by Maureen McCann Waldron began working with the Kingman family and the Times to bring it back. The Times donated the mural to the Joslyn Castle Trust in 2014, and it arrived in Omaha that May. The committee, Maureen McCann Waldron, Julie Cobb, Amy Trenolone, Julie A. Reilly and Lyn Wallin Ziegenbein, raised more than $60,000 for the restoration, installation and an educational program. Kenneth Bé of the Ford Conservation Center led the restoration, removing decades of dirt and smoke that had darkened the painting.

Bruce Frasier was master of ceremonies. Maureen McCann Waldron told the mural’s story, the mural was unveiled, and Kenneth Bé described the conservation work. The Kingman family spoke last. Kingman’s daughters, Elizabeth Anne Kingman and Mixie Kingman Eddy, were there, with his grandson, Quinlan Kingman Eddy, and his nephew, Lou Kingman.

David Dunlap wrote about the mural’s return for The New York Times that same day, and a front-page Omaha World-Herald column by Matthew Hansen told the story at home. Quinlan Kingman Eddy filmed the whole ceremony, and the video is below; it is also on YouTube.

The mural hung at W. Dale Clark until the library closed. In 2026 it found a permanent home at the new Omaha Central Library. For more on the mural, see major works, and for the press coverage and programs, see the archive.