"As shareholders we have the unique opportunity to hold this artwork cooperatively": An artist and archivist shares her insights on the Hugo Gellert murals and the wall tiles

In May, 3x3 (the firm the Board hired to lead shareholder engagement surrounding the lobby and landscaping renovation) launched a survey and a series of “listening sessions,” which they are now synthesizing. As part of our community’s ongoing conversations around the renovations, we feel it’s important for shareholders to have relevant context—because people can’t really determine what they want (or don’t want) if they don’t have relevant facts, context, and costs. With that in mind, we are continuing to offer insights from resident experts here. The more all of us know about the place we call home, the better! 

If you want to have a say in the future of our lobbies and grounds, please plan to attend the 3x3 shareback session on Wednesday, July 22 at 7 p.m. at Manny Cantor Center (197 East Broadway, 6th Floor). If you can’t attend, keep an eye on your email inbox with instructions from management on how to view a recording of the session and send your feedback to the Board.

The below article is an interview with shareholder Carmelle Safdie, who has lived in Seward Park Co-op since 2016. 

The Seward Park Cooperator: What is your background/what do you do for work? 

Carmelle: I am an artist and teach in the Art History Department at the School of Visual Arts, and at the Cooper Union School of Art. I also direct the Irwin Rubin Archive and manage a couple other artists’ estates, advocating for artists’ work and careers when they are no longer around to do so. This can include archiving their papers, and working with museum curators and conservators on acquisitions. I learned the art of enameling from my grandmother, Vera Ronnen, and am working to preserve the murals and elevator doors she made for public and corporate lobbies in Israel, Europe, and the US. My artwork and teaching focuses on color, both as a perceptual phenomenon and physical substance. Looking closely at materials to learn about art, artists, and their historic context connects everything I do. 

When you look at our murals, what do you see? 

I see classically-rendered figures, historic quotes, floating allegorical symbols, and the subtle curvature of the walls, highlighted by the way sunlight hits the smooth plaster surface and tens of thousands of ceramic tiles. A wounded revolutionary soldier, oversized hands cupping a baby, a microphone and upright bass, a fist wielding a wrench and other tools, shackles and a torn noose, children skipping rope, a dove taking flight from a war-torn helmet. In these images I see foundational principles: freedom of religion, emancipation from slavery, labor rights, education and the arts, nonviolence, scientific progress, and integrated schooling, all expressions of American Progressivism important to both Hugo Gellert and the union members who commissioned him.

The murals are painted in the Works Progress Administration (WPA) style, and elaborate on the imagery Gellert used in Capital in Pictures, 1933, and Century of the Common Man, 1943 (both held in the MoMA and Whitney collections). But I think it’s interesting that, created decades after that New Deal era initiative, he uses the WPA style to address post-war themes, like nuclear anxiety and the Civil Rights movement. In the context of Seward Park Co-op, Jefferson, Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Einstein personify the buildings that house them, and the colors and themes of each mural distinguish the otherwise uniform architecture. As a body of work, erected at our founding and twice saved from obliteration, they have come to stand in for our co-op’s history and legacy. 

Related reading: "A community rather than just an apartment house": The collectivist history of Seward Park Co-op

I’ve lived in the Lincoln building for a decade now, and when I look at the murals, I also see them change over time. This can be positive, as all good artworks unfold slowly and in relation to an evolving viewer. I come to appreciate the way a face is rendered, or a detail I hadn’t noticed before. And the meaning of the imagery changes as I do. For example, now that my son attends a District 1 public school founded on the teachings of Martin Luther King Jr., I find new significance in Gellert’s depiction of Black and white school children walking hand in hand, and in acknowledging this image on our daily route to school. But I’ve also seen damage to the murals unfold in real time: I watched a maintenance worker spackle over Abraham Lincoln’s 1862 Annual Message to Congress, and a cavity in the plaster and tiles is slowly growing larger. When I see the murals, I also see a nearly 70-year-old artwork in need of conservation.

I know you have read the assessment put together by Evergreene about the murals in full; what jumped out to you? 

First, it might be helpful to explain what this document is. The “Assessment and Conservation Treatment Recommendations” by Evergreene Architectural Arts was solicited by our owner’s rep, Zubatkin, prepared in June 2025, and is available to all shareholders on the renovation website. It combines on-site material explorations and archival research to assess the current condition of the murals, and provide recommendations for conservation. 

I was struck by the level of care and consideration that went into the assessment. The conservators present a comprehensive picture of Gellert’s broader career, and look to his work as an illustrator and printmaker to better understand the murals. Referencing correspondence and shopping lists collected at the Smithsonian Archives of American Art, they reveal the precise pigments he used and where he bought them, as well as his tools and techniques. While Gellert did work directly on plaster, the murals are neither the traditional buon frescoes nor secco fresco. Instead, Gellert developed a unique approach to mixing dry and wet materials. It’s not uncommon for artists to employ pencil, charcoal and pastel in preparatory sketches or underpainting, but what’s distinct is that Gellert foregrounded these materials as part of the finished artwork. 

If you live in the Einstein building, you may have noticed that the large male and female figures appear to be rendered at the hand of two very different artists. The Evergreene assessment confirms this suspicion, and presents the mural today alongside documentation from 1961 as evidence of heavy overpainting.

Evergreene concludes by suggesting two options for treating the murals. Both comply with their professional standards and code of ethics, but offer two very different outcomes. The budget option is simply to stabilize and clean, the other is comprehensive conservation that removes the post-historic overpainting and promises “a dramatic change in appearance, returning to their original simplicity.” 

Something else that struck me about the assessment is that, while Evergreene specializes in mosaic restoration, in the 38-page document the tiles below the paintings are only mentioned in passing, and there is no study and assessment of the tiles. It appears that Evergreene was only hired to look at the paint on plaster, and the gap between their recommendations and the plans presented by Woods-Bagot leaves me concerned that, while there are good intentions behind restoring the murals, major decisions are being made before consulting specialists. 

Are the tiles vitreous ceramic? Where were they made or sourced? Were they selected and designed by Gellert, or did he paint the murals with their colors and finishes in mind? What’s caused the tile loss in the Lincoln mural, and how can we stabilize and repair it? I’d also like to learn more about the relationship between the artwork and the architecture. Since the murals were commissioned for a new construction project, it’s likely there was correspondence between Gellert and Herman Jessor’s office or the United Housing Foundation, which would shed more light on the artist’s intentions.  

You zeroed in on the wall tiles, which Woods-Bagot proposed covering up in the designs they shared in December. The Gellert mural gets most of the attention in conversations about our lobbies, but I’d love to hear more of your observations and curiosities about the tiles. 

I consider the tiles part of the Gellert murals, because they are integral to the same plaster substrate on which the frescos are painted (meaning the tiles and painting are held together by the same material), and because they express unique characteristics and finishes harmonious to the imagery above. I think it’s interesting that even though tiles are a material commonly used in public artworks, when juxtaposed with the figurative paintings above, they become virtually invisible. In all of the articles I’ve read on the murals, the tiles are never acknowledged. 

Each mural has approximately 44,208 hand-painted tiles that come in four distinct colors and marbleized glazes. That’s over 170K tiles between all four buildings! There’s also evidence that at one point, tiles of other colors covered the columns and elevator vestibules. 

Today, the Lincoln building has noticeable areas of tile loss. It’s visually distracting, but we’re only missing about 34 tiles, which amounts to less than 1% of the overall material. The other murals are missing 0-5 tiles each.

When I asked the Board why they’re not restoring the tiles, they said it’s because we no longer have backups, and the supplier went out of business. If Evergreene had assessed the tiles, then we’d know more. But regardless, the areas of loss are small, and there are so many options. We could have matching tiles produced, find a close match (small repairs like this are visible in the Jefferson mural), or use the commonplace conservation practice of painting fill material to match the existing finish. The grout needs attention too. It looks like it’s been redone in a harsh white, sometimes only in areas. I believe the tilework would be greatly improved with attention to these details. 

And when assessing the tiles, we shouldn’t just consider their physical condition, but consider how they fit into the artwork too. We might start by asking if Gellert worked with tile in other projects. My initial research shows that—yes, he did! His next mural, for Hillcrest High School in Jamaica, Queens, was composed entirely of mosaic.

Bill Andrews’ 1972 photos for the Daily Worker, found in the Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives at NYU, show Gellert posing with students and a completed artwork that spans the interior and exterior of a school entrance. This doesn’t necessarily prove that Gellert worked with tiles a decade earlier, nor do we need to prove that he had a hand in our tiles in order to appreciate and care for them in relation to the paintings above. But the open questions, and these photos, leave me craving further research.

What would you like to see happen to the tiles and the murals in terms of the renovation and next steps? 

I know there is concern about the overall cost of the lobby renovations, but I would urge the Board not to cut costs when it comes to restoring the murals. I’d like to see the overpainting removed and any loss or damage restored, bringing the murals back up to Gellert’s original vision. I’d also like to see the tiles properly documented and assessed, and then treated holistically with the murals. And I would hold off on additions like vinyl appliqués on the ceilings which, while reversible, add unnecessary cost, and more importantly compromise the integrity of the artwork. 

I’m also really happy to learn that the building entrances are staying in place, because I think it’s important that the murals remain visible from beyond our security boundary. They are the only surviving murals by Gellert, and in this way they remain public-facing and accessible to any scholar, curator, neighbor, or whoever wishes to view them. 

We should also encourage education and viewing within our community. There are bronze plaques on our facades identifying Orsid management, but no signature, wall label, or plaque identifying Gellert. I’ve noticed that when I pause to look at the murals, the guards ask if I need help, and when a museum curator friend coming up for dinner stopped to study them, he was asked to pass additional security measures. Having signage would be a first step in announcing that these artworks are here for us to spend time with and take pride in, and would help to educate shareholders, staff, and even prospective buyers.

I’d also like to see a committee dedicated to preserving the murals and other historic aspects of our buildings. This could be a volunteer group of shareholders who are curators, art historians, and conservators. These arts professionals could guide our management and maintenance teams in daily care of the murals, liaise with outside specialists like Evergreene, and keep a record of research and repairs. I think there’s a prevailing narrative that the murals were threatened in the past, but have been saved. Looking closer, how secure are they? And how can we be better stewards going forward?

Is there anything else you'd like to mention, or that you want shareholders to know?

Collectively the murals span hundreds of feet. Artworks of this scale are usually owned by public-facing institutions like museums, transit systems, government buildings, or by private corporations. You may or may not have an art collection in your own apartment, but as shareholders we have the unique opportunity to hold this artwork cooperatively. Gellert was an activist and fought to save murals by other artists during his lifetime. I think it’s beautiful that, time and again, our community stands up to advocate for his.

Thank you so much for your insights, Carmelle! Please remember to attend the 3x3 shareback session on Wednesday, July 22 at 7 p.m. at Manny Cantor Center (197 East Broadway, 6th Floor). If you can’t attend, keep an eye on your email inbox with instructions from management on how to view a recording of the session and send your feedback to the Board.