It’s a different kind of wonderland for Alice, from the beloved Lewis Carroll story.
The rabbit hole leads to New York City in a mural series by artist Abram Champanier, that was once in the children’s ward at the city’s Gouverneur Hospital on the Lower East Side.
What You Need To Know
“Another Wonderland” is a new exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York
It features Abram Chamanier’s mural series, which takes inspiration from Alice from Alice in Wonderland
The murals were rescued and restored after the closure of Gouverneur Hospital on the Lower East Side
“It was really a gift to the kids who were in the hospital when there was no TV, no iPads, no video games and they needed something to keep them entertained and pass the time,” said Lilly Tuttle, a curator at the Museum of the City of New York where the mural series in on display as part of an exhibition that opens to the public on June 6.
The 16-panel mural was created between 1938 and 1940 through the Works Progress Administration’s (WPA) federal art project. Fourteen surviving panels and two reproductions are on view.
The art was nearly lost when the hospital was closed and abandoned in the 1960s, but the panels were rescued in 1981 by art conservators Alan and Denise Farancz and a team of volunteers.
“A team of preservationists went in and removed the panels that can be saved, restored and put back on view, but you can tell it’s been a multi-decade process to get these back into the world,” said Tuttle.
The panels show Alice and friends visiting landmarks like the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, and trips to Coney Island and the Central Park Zoo. The exhibition’s lead supporter is the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund.
“Rick, my brilliant executive director, heard about these murals and did tremendous research as he tends to do, and this came up and then once they were all restored thought this would be the perfect place and it is the perfect place to do an exhibition,” said Tisch.
The executive director of the fund, Rick Luftglass, wonders if any children who were entertained by the murals while at the hospital might remember them.
“I wish I could meet kids who were there at that time or in successive decades. Maybe through the exhibit someone who saw them in the 1950s when they were still active, or the 1960s, will say wait I remember those. That would be amazing,” said Luftglass.
The mural panels will be at the museum until Sept. 27, and then, in a full circle moment, they will head back downtown to NYC Health + Hospitals Gouverneur Health Care Services Building. It’s not the same building as the original, but the same system and name.
“The works will be mostly together in that space on two different floors but really the experience will be similar in that you will have that very immersive large-scale experience as a visitor, we have school groups that come and visit and a lot of academic institutions interested in the murals, and so we are just so proud to put these back out into the community,” said Larissa Trinder, the assistant vice president of arts and medicine at NYC Health + Hospitals.
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