NEW YORK — A mural honoring ancient and modern figures from medicine that has hung in the lobby of Pfizer’s original headquarters in New York City for more than 60 years could soon disappear into pieces if preservationists can’t find a new home for it in the coming weeks.
“Medical Research Through the Ages,” a vast mosaic of metal and tile depicting scientists and lab equipment, has been visible from the soaring glass lobby of the pharmaceutical giant’s downtown Manhattan offices since the 1960s.
The building is currently being gutted and converted into apartments, and the new owners have stipulated that the mural must be completed by September 10th.
Art curators The late artist’s daughters are now scrambling to find a patron to pay the tens of thousands of dollars needed to move and rehang the work, and an institution that will exhibit it.
“Ideally, I would like to see it as part of an educational future, whether it’s on a hospital campus as part of a school or a college. Or as part of a larger public art program for the citizens of New York City,” said art historian and urban planner Andrew Cronson, one of those trying to find a new home for the work.
The 40-foot-wide, 18-foot-high (12 meters by 5.5 meters) mural by Greek-American artist Nikos Bel-Jon was the centerpiece of Pfizer’s corporate headquarters when the building opened a few blocks from Grand Central Terminal in 1961, at a time when flashy buildings and grand corporate art projects were symbols of business success. He died in 1966, leaving behind dozens of large brushed-metal works commissioned by companies and private institutions, many of which are now lost or destroyed.
In recent years, Pfizer has sold the building — and last year moved its headquarters to shared office space in a newer building. The company said in an emailed statement that it decided the money needed to deconstruct, relocate and reinstall the mural elsewhere would be better spent on “patient-related priorities.”
The developer that is now converting the building into apartments, Metro Loft, also doesn’t want to keep the artwork, though it has worked with those trying to save it with help such as allowing art appraisers in. The company declined to comment further, but Jack Berman, the company’s chief operating officer, confirmed in an email that it will have to remove the mural.
Bel-Jon’s youngest daughter, Rhea Bel-Jon Calkins, said they’ve had interest from universities that could take over the piece, and a Greek cultural organization that could help raise funds for the move. But the move alone could cost between $20,000 and $50,000, according to estimates cited by Cronson.
If they can’t find a buyer right away, the mural won’t end up in a landfill, Bel-Jon Calkins said. But it would have to be broken into pieces — nine metal sections and eight mosaic sections — and taken to storage, likely with some of her relatives.
Time is ticking. Workers clearing out the building have removed torn carpeting, dull office chairs and piles of scrap wood and loaded them into garbage trucks.
For decades past, the artwork’s metal—brushed tin and aluminum panels in the shapes of lab beakers, funnels, and flasks, surrounded by symbols, alchemists, and scientists—had been a dull gray and white. But Bel-Jon Calkins remembers the original, multicolored lighting scheme.
“As you moved, the color moved with you and changed. So there was a constant dynamic in the mural that no one has ever really been able to achieve,” she said.
Richard McCoy, executive director of the Indiana-based nonprofit Landmark Columbus Foundation, which promotes local buildings and landscapes, said the artwork may not have commercial value. He described Bel-Jon as “extraordinary, but not super famous.”
“But then you don’t realize until 20 or 30 years later how great it was,” he said, adding that it may be worth preserving for its historical value.
Bel-Jon Calkins keeps track of her father’s 42 large-scale metal murals in a spreadsheet and on the artist’s websiteShe said there are only about ten confirmed copies.
A 12-foot-long metal mosaic depicting saints, commissioned by a Greek Orthodox church in San Francisco, was destroyed by the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. General Motors commissioned a grant to create a metal mural in the shape of a hubcap larger than a car, but confirmed it was later melted down for scrap.
“It’s the businesses that lost them,” she said in a phone interview from her home in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. “They valued them enough to order them, but not enough to keep them.”
