Thursday, May 7, 2026

On May 7, 2026, art historian and Docomomo MI board president Deborah Lubera Kawsky, Ph.D., and conservator Ron Koenig of Building Arts & Conservation presented a talk on the amazing story of the mural's creation, preservation, and conservation.

Their talk traced the fascinating history of an abstract wood mural, created in 1952 by midcentury architect and designer Alexander Girard, one of a circle of modern architects and designers active in Detroit at midcentury. The mural, created for the designer's own home in Grosse Pointe, MI, was believed lost after the home’s demolition. However, the more than 200 pieces of the fourteen-feet-high by twenty-feet-wide mural were rediscovered in 2018 and restored in 2023.