“Twilight Shadows” has a new home.
The nine-panel mosaic mural by Gerome Kamrowski used to hang at the outside entrance to the City of Ann Arbor’s Larcom Municipal Building at Fifth Avenue and Huron Street. But construction of the new police-courts building forced its relocation.
Under the auspices of the city’s Public Art Commission, the work was reinstalled today in the four-story atrium between the two buildings. Aaron Seagraves, the city’s public-art administrator, said that the mural was acquired for the city by a citizens group in 1992.
Gallery: Gerome Kamrowski artwork installed in new atrium at Ann Arbor municipal complex
EJH Construction employees Thomas Kay, left, and his son Jim Kay reinstall a panel of artist Gerome Kamrowski’s mosaic in the new Ann Arbor City Hall atrium on Sept. 9, 2011. Angela J. Cesere | AnnArbor.com
“The new installation will give these pieces much better lighting and a remarkable setting for the community to enjoy for the next 50 years,” Seagraves wrote in an email.
A task force of the commission, chaired by Margaret Parker, selected the atrium site after a previous plan for a work by Herbert Dreiseitl—who is doing the large water sculpture outside the new building—fell through. Initially, it seemed the atrium would be too large for the mural, but it turned out to be perfect, Parker said.
The installation was handled by EJH Construction and Project Manager John Tucker, who is Kamrowski’s stepson. Parker said he has handled a number of Kamrowski installations.
Kamrowski first became nationally known when he lived in New York and worked as part of the abstract expressionist movement. He moved to Ann Arbor in 1948 to teach at the University of Michigan School of Art & Design, from which he retired in 1982. He died in 2004 in Ann Arbor.
Tags: Gerome Kamrowski, art & exhibits, local art,