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Butler museum branch to open Soulages gallery
By GUY D’ASTOLFO
HOWLAND
A ceramic tile mural by renowned French artist Pierre Soulages will make its debut in its new home this weekend.
The 14-foot-by-20-foot mural, titled “14 May, 1968,” now resides in a special gallery built specifically for it in the Trumbull Branch of the Butler Institute of American Art. It will be dedicated at 5 p.m. Saturday in a private event at the museum branch at 9350 E. Market St.
The public opening will be Sunday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Louis Zona, director of the Butler who spearheaded the museum’s acquisition of the mural, will give a lecture on “Pierre Soulages in Context” at 2 p.m. Sunday.
Zona has long admired the mural by Soulages, who is now 90 and is considered France’s greatest living artist. As a college student in Pittsburgh years ago, Zona often would go to the lobby of the Oliver Building, a downtown skyscraper, where the mural was housed, to marvel at it.
The Oliver Building was sold about a year ago, and the new owners no longer wanted the artwork. They offered it for free to several museums in Pittsburgh, but each one turned it down because of the great expense involved in moving and housing the artwork.
When they offered it to the Butler, Zona gladly accepted it.
The piece was commissioned as part of the construction of the building in the 1960s, but respect for it was diminished over the years. A security-guard desk was placed in front of it, and at times it was partially obscured by planters, said Zona.
The new home of the mural in Howland, on the other hand, shows tremendous respect for the piece. The mural is housed behind a huge glass wall in a newly built 28-foot-by-28-foot gallery, behind which can be seen the Soulages piece. The wall will be lit up at night so that the piece will be visible to motorists driving by on Route 82.
The removal and restoration of the mural cost $25,000, and construction of its new gallery cost $300,000. The Butler is still raising the money through grants and gifts from private citizens. Work on the gallery began in 2009, and it was completed in August.
The mural has about 300 tiles, each one 11 inches by 11 inches and weighing 10 pounds. It was restored by Larry Mobley, a restoration expert from Michigan. Vincent Bacon, a retired engineer and a Butler trustee, directed the project.
The Soulages gallery was designed by Bart Gilmore of Cortland.