Rediscovery and Restoration: abstract mural by Joseph Rugolo created for the WPA in the 1930s
Under the Surface Hidden beneath coats of house paint in a New York hospital slated for demolition, abstract murals created for the WPA in the 1930s awaited rediscovery and restoration. A conservator performing inpainting on a WPA-commissioned mural by Joseph Rugolo. Featured Images: (Click to Enlarge) A resourceful art doctor, it turns out, must possess skill in sleuthing. Before the Goldwater Memorial Hospital on Roosevelt Island—a two-mile-long dagger’s blade anchored in the East River that for most New Yorkers functions as little more than the underpass of the Queensboro Bridge—was demolished last year, the city’s Art Commission insisted that the new owner of the site, Cornell University, execute a search for two murals entombed somewhere in the hospital’s walls. The murals—one painted by Albert Swinden, the other by Joseph Rugolo—were commissioned by the Works Progress Administration and for that reason, in part, wer