Exclusive presentation for the Michigan Historic Preservation Network annual conference: This talk traces the history of an abstract wood mural, created in 1952 by Alexander Girard – one of a circle of modern architects and designers active in Detroit at midcentury -- for his home in Grosse Pointe, MI. Believed lost after the home’s demolition, the more than 200 pieces of the fourteen-feet-high by twenty-feet-wide mural were rediscovered in 2018 and restored in 2023.

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Conservator Ron Koenig with Girard Mural Components (before restoration)

Photo Credit: Robert Lubera  

Overview of Masterpiece(s): the Rediscovery of a Midcentury Mural by Alexander Girard

Alexander Girard was one of a circle of modern architects and designers working in Detroit at midcentury. During the summer of 1952, Girard created an abstract wood mural for the exterior dining porch of his home in Grosse Pointe, MI. Upon completion, the mural was celebrated in national publications as a modernist masterpiece. 

After his move to Santa Fe, NM in 1953, the Girard home had a series of owners and was eventually demolished. The mural was believed lost. In 2018, Art Historian Deborah Lubera Kawsky met the property’s new owner, Mary Roby, and learned that she had saved the mural’s 200-plus individual pieces.

In 2019, Building Arts & Conservation joined the project and began the process of restoring and conserving the mural. Project-planning and overall work involved extensive research, and documentation, as well as repair, cleaning, and stabilization of individual pieces. 

At this point, the entire project team came together to determine how the mural could best be exhibited. A unique framework was fabricated that both restored the look, feel and context of Girard’s original creation, yet also allowed for it to be assembled, disassembled, and transported for future exhibitions.

Girard Mural in situ at Girard Residence, 222 Lothrop, Grosse Pointe, MI. Photo Credit: ©Ezra Stoller/Esto