Phoenix 24
A rescued mural becomes a city’s second childhood.
New York City, United States | June 2026. A monumental mural inspired by Alice in Wonderland has returned to public view in New York after surviving demolition, neglect and decades of interrupted restoration. Created by Abram Champanier between 1938 and 1940 for the pediatric ward of Gouverneur Hospital in Lower Manhattan, the work reimagined Lewis Carroll’s fantasy through the city’s own geography, placing Alice and her companions inside the urban imagination of New York.
The mural was part of the Federal Art Project, a New Deal initiative that brought art into public buildings during the Great Depression. Its original purpose was deeply human: to offer children in a hospital setting a visual escape from illness, fear and institutional coldness. Across sixteen large panels, fantasy became care, and the city became a playground of recovery.
Its survival is almost as remarkable as its imagery. When the abandoned hospital was being dismantled in 1981, the mural was rescued through an unusual preservation effort that kept the work from disappearing with the building. Some panels were restored early, but the full project remained unfinished for decades due to lack of funding.
Now, the complete cycle has been reunited and restored at the Museum of the City of New York in the exhibition Another Wonderland: The Alice Mural by Abram Champanier. Two missing panels were recreated with fidelity, allowing the work to be seen again as a full narrative environment rather than a fragment of cultural memory.
The revival matters because public art often carries stories that official history forgets. This was not a private masterpiece made for elite collectors. It was created for immigrant communities, sick children and hospital workers who encountered beauty in a place defined by vulnerability. Its return reminds the city that preservation is not only about saving objects, but about protecting the emotional architecture of public life.
Alice’s return to New York is therefore more than a museum event. It is a recovery of civic imagination, proof that even works nearly erased by demolition can reenter history when someone decides they still belong to the city.
Contra la propaganda, memoria. / Against propaganda, memory.