From the famous names whose works grace museum walls to the countless anonymous craftspeople who adorned courthouse domes and theater lobbies, American artists have woven themselves into the very fabric of our built environment.
During the month of July, we celebrate not just the art, but the artists whose visions shape our landscapes, our communities, and our cultural memory. Through our conservation and restoration practice, we’ve had the privilege of getting to know these creators through their techniques, their materials, their artistic choices that reveal personality and intention. Our work has brought us face-to-face with four remarkable American artists which we’re featuring here, each with their own story to tell.
Keith Haring’s pop art emerged from the New York City graffiti subculture of the 1980s.
Haring’s popularity grew from his spontaneous drawings in New York City subways: chalk outlines of figures, dogs, and other stylized images on blank black advertising spaces. After gaining public recognition, he created colorful larger scale murals, many commissioned. He produced more than 50 public artworks between 1982 and 1989, many of them created voluntarily for hospitals, day care centers, and schools. EverGreene has established itself as the leading expert in conserving Haring’s works.
Robert Winthrop Chanler was a key figure of the American Gilded Age.
A designer and muralist, Chanler received much of his art training in France at the École des Beaux-Arts. Chanler rose to prominence as an acclaimed American artist when his work was exhibited in the 1913 Armory Show in New York City. Chanler was commissioned by James Deering to create a immersive and highly decorative swimming pool grotto at his Vizcaya estate in Miami, FL. The grotto and the ceiling mural are one of Vizcaya’s most celebrated historic commissions.
Hildreth Meière was an American muralist especially known for her Art Deco style designs.
During her 40-year career, she completed approximately 100 commissions. She designed murals for office buildings, churches, government centers, theaters, restaurants, cocktail lounges, ocean liners, and world’s fair pavilions, and she worked in a wide variety of mediums. Her 1939 mural depicting the early history at Kansas City Union Station and her Art Deco designs at Temple Emanu-El are exemplary of her iconic work.
Edwin Blashfield was a American Renaissance painter an muralist & prominent Gilded Age artist.
Best known for his magnificent ceiling murals adorning the dome of the Library of Congress Main Reading Room in Washington, DC, some of his other work can be found in court houses and sacred spaces across the country, including at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle in Washington, DC, the Essex County Courthouse in Newark, the Hudson County Courthouse in Jersey City, NJ, the Lucerne County Courthouse in Wilkes-Barre, PA, the New York State Appellate Courthouse in New York City, and the Iowas State Capitol in Des Moines.
