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The Siar-Leager wednesDAY Febuary 15, 1978 'Lost' airport murals guided to a landing By EILEEN WATKINS [[image]] Images of a 'wind sock,' a barometer and other aviation instruments are incorporated in this composition by Arshile Gorky, one of the two murals recovered from the old Newark Airport and now in storage at the Newark Museum [[image]] Photo by Richard Tashjian Samuel C. Miller, director of the Newark Museum, discusses the upcoming murals exhibit with Ruth Bowman, special projects consultant for the museum, and Saul Wenegrat, secretary to the Art Committee and administrator of Architectural Services for the Port Authortiy of New York-New Jersey Art historian Ruth Bowman is happy because she feels she is involved in "righting a wrong." As a special projects consultant to the Newark Museum, she will soon be seeing the fruits of six years of work, when the museum displays several precious artworks rescued from obscurity at Newark Airport. In a luncheon lecture yesterday at the museum, she presented to the public for the first time the full details on the recovery of the "lost" murals. The Work Projects Administration instituted during the Depression made possible public works by a number of artists who later achieved international status. Among them was abstract expressionist Arshile Gorky. In 1939 the WPA commissioned Gorky to do a series of murals for the old Newark Airport Administration [[stamp]] Art Opening [[/stamp]] Building, now known as the North Terminal. Gorky approached his assignment very seriously, forming abstract compositions that related to the parts of a plane, instruments found around the hangar, and airline maps. He used mainly primary colors, with some grays and browns, and solid, hard-edged forms. Controversy greeted the murals when they were unveiled in 1936. At that time, Newark was the major airport in the metropolitan area, and the installation was considered a daring move by those dubious about modern art. * * * Whether or not the murals received the proper appreciation, a few years later they disappeared from view. From 1941 to 1948 the Army took over the airport and the walls, including Gorky's canvas murals, were repainted with yellow housepaint. Gorky died in 1948, and for many years the existence of the murals was a secret to all but a few art experts who remembered their installation. In 1951 the "Magazine of Art" printed an article by painter Stuart Davis, in which Davis recalled the "hemming and hawing" that took place in New Jersey over the acceptance of the Gorky murals. He credited a "delegation from New York," including myself, with persuading the "locals" to install the murals, and ended by saying, "Whatever happened to those murals, I don't know." Among the others who wondered about the fate of the Gorky artworks was Dorothy Miller, a member of the Art Committee of the Port Authority of New York-New Jersey, and widow of Holger Cahill, the national director of the WPA Art Project. She began an inventory of the art in the older Port Authority buildings around 1970. * * * By 1972 Ruth Bowman, then curator of the New York University Art Collection, had begun her own search for the lost murals. She and Lawrence Majewski, director of the Conservation Center of the Institute of Fine Arts at NYU, joined forces with Saul Wenegrat, secretary to the Art Committee and administrator of architectural service for the Port Authority. They discovered that of the ten-panel series, only two murals remained - and they were buried under 14 layers of housepaint. Through grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the canvases were removed and taken to the studios of Oliver Brothers in Boston for restoration. This November, in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of Newark Airport, the murals will be exhibited at the Newark Museum. The show marks the first time they have been seen by the public in 37 years. The exhibit will be supplemented by a film of the painstaking restoration work, made by Rachel Strickland, professor in the film department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Bowman continues her research, meanwhile, and vows, "I know by next November we will have twice as much background material on the murals as I do now." * * * For Sam Miller, the director of the museum, the recent arrival of the Gorky murals was a memorable moment. "I wish I could tell you my emotions when they arrived," he says. "It was so exciting opening the doors and seeing them for the first time. "The whole staff was in awe. We had a sense of something awfully important happening at the museum."
