August 18, 2020 - 3:06 PM
NEW ORLEANS - A huge plaster mural that once adorned the three-story-tall lobby of a New Orleans newspaper building will return to public view at a museum.
The New Orleans Museum of Art announced in a news release that the relief mural by Mexican sculptor Enrique Alferez will be featured in its 2020 auditorium renovation. The renovation, and the recently installed mural, will be unveiled next year, a museum spokeswoman said in an email.
The mural was created for the lobby of The Times-Picayune building in 1967. It features characters and symbols from various forms of human language across diverse cultures. Among the symbols are Roman and Greek alphabets, Egyptian hieroglyphics, Arabic, Chinese and Japanese characters, and the dots and dashes of Morse code and Braille, according to Tuesday's news release.
The mural is composed of 156 panels, each roughly 3 feet (0.91 metres) by 8 feet (2.44 metres), each weighing approximately 200 pounds (90.72 kilograms).
Investors who bought the building in 2016 — Joe Jaeger, Barry Kern, Michael White and Arnold Kirschman — had the mural carefully removed and stored before the building was demolished, according to The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate. They later donated the mural to the museum.
News from © The Associated Press, 2020