WPA Murals Discovered at University of Rhode Island
A summer renovation project at the University of Rhode Island has uncovered six murals created in the 1930s and 1940s for the Works Progress Adminstration. They are the work of Gino Conti, a Providence artist who completed his final set of mural paintings for the lobby of Edwards Hall at what was then known as Rhode Island State College. Historians believed the canvases to be lost until a team of workers renovating the 900-seat auditorium discovered them beneath walls and panelling erected in the 1960s. The works are classically inspired, according to URI art history professor Ron Onorato, an expert on WPA works who interviewed Conti before his death in 1983. “He was looking at European work; he went to Europe a number of times, and also examined the famous Mexican muralists in the 1930s,” said Onorato. “These murals are about values.”
The university brought in professionals from the Williamstown Art Conservation Center to remove and clean the murals, which were affixed to the walls with wallpaper paste. “We were very excited to see the uncovering of the works and further to learn they are of a Providence based artist whose family moved to Rhode Island in the very early 1900s,” said Thomas Frisbie-Fulton, director of Campus Planning and Design, in a statement issued by the university. “Our work since uncovering the murals has been to isolate them and protect them from the ongoing construction.” The goal is to eventually return the murals to the auditorium.
