Saving Alice’s Mural: A New York Rescue and Revival

Abram Champanier painted Alice’s Adventures in New York across 16 monumental panels from 1938 to 1940, wrapping the children’s ward of Lower Manhattan’s Gouverneur Hospital. Alice and her companions buzzed over the Empire State Building, scaled the crown of the Statue of Liberty, parachuted into Coney Island, rode the stone lions of the 42nd Street Public Library and squeezed onto a subway at rush hour.

The mural was one of some 2,500 works commissioned by the Federal Art Project. In 1981, as the abandoned hospital was being gutted, a small team led by conservator Alan Farancz mounted a guerrilla-style rescue, rolling canvases off the walls after securing flaking paint with Japanese rice paper.

One panel, the giant swordfish scene, was too deteriorated to be retrieved; five panels were restored and shown in the 1990s before work stalled for decades for lack of funding.

United States, Lower Manhattan

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