Wauwatosa East High School Mural – Wauwatosa WI

City:
Wauwatosa, WI

Site Type:
Art Works, Murals

New Deal Agencies:
Arts Programs, Federal Arts Project (FAP)

Completed:
1937

Artist:
Myron Nutting

Description

“[The painter of these murals was] Myron Nutting and in 1934 when he painted the canvases under a Federal Arts Program project at Wauwatosa (East) High School, he was an art instructor at the old Layton School of Art in Milwaukee…

Nutting was commissioned in June 1934 to design and paint the Wauwatosa High School murals in the school’s art-deco style front lobby. The murals hang on facing walls, each in a space measuring 14 feet by 4 feet, above glazed tile walls. In a modernization during the mid-1970s, the murals, tiles and two oak trophy cabinets were covered over with plaster and wallboard. The heads and shoulders on the murals were hidden under dropped ceilings that also concealed wiring, piping and cables that were added during the modernization…

The Wauwatosa mural had been requested in January 1934 by Wauwatosa school superintendent William T. Darling. Darling picked the two walls for the murals and suggested as subjects “a local landscape or a scene of old Wauwatosa.” He authorized payment to the federal government of $75 for the cost of materials as the application suggested…

A major fund drive by alumni, current students and the community has successfully raised the $125,000 needed to fund the restoration work by artists, mural restorers and volunteers who removed more than 2,000 pounds of plaster from the murals, walls, and the oak and etched glass cabinets that braced the old main entrance to the Wauwatosa High School building (now called Wauwatosa East High School).”

-WPA Murals

Source notes

WPA Murals: https://www.wpamurals.org/wauwatos.htm Originally posted in the New Deal Art Registry: https://www.newdealartregistry.org/

Location Info


7500 Milwaukee Avenue
Wauwatosa, WI 53213
Milwaukee County

Location notes: Lobby

Coordinates: 43.053748, -88.00615

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