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Arshile Gorky Murals Recovered

[[2 images]]
Two of the 10 original Arshile Gorky panels meet at the northeast corner of the second floor foyer in the Newark Airport Administration Building in this WPA New Jersey Art Project photo of April, 1940. Inset shows the same corner in 1975, after the discovery of two of the panels under 14 layers of paint, but before their painstaking removal. "Mechanics of Flying" panel at right was discovered in 1973, removed and restored for an upcoming Newark Museum exhibit on the murals. The panel at left, "Activities on the Field," is presumed to be lost or destroyed.

The Airport's "Buried" Treasures

By Ruth Bowman

To anyone who had never been there before it was just an ordinary upstairs hallway, but to this particular group of people it was a treasure hunt in an art deco landmark—a search for a lost, or "buried," treasure. It is a hunt the results of which will become known to the public only in an exhibition which will open at the Newark Museum in November of this year.
More than 40 years ago the Armenian-American painter, Arshile Gorky, was assigned to create murals for the second floor foyer of the then new Administration Building at Newark Airport. Now the question was were the murals there or had 

they been destroyed and as every article and book on Gorky stated: "lost"?
As early as November of 1935, Beatrice Winser, director of the Newark Museum, had discussed with federal officials the possibility of having artists on relief under the new Works Progress Administration assigned to the painting of murals for this impressive building, which had been constructed under the Civil Works Administration and dedicated in May of that year.
At the end of December, 1935, during the opening exhibition of the new WPA gallery on 39th Street, Gorky had shown Mayor LaGuardia a study he had done under the direction of Burgoyne Diller, chief of the mural project for New York

City. This mural design was for Floyd Bennet Field. But it was for only one wall, and the needs of Newark's much grander project prevailed. The January, 1936, prospectus stated in part:

"The central idea upon which the... mural paintings will be based will be the depiction of forms which have evolved from aerodynamic limitations; in other words, with the advent of the science of aviation, new forms came into being. The history of aviation might be said to start with early legends and stories of man's aspiration to fly. This can be called the romantic period, and would provide subject material for

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1978 • metro-Newark! • 21