The Ellis Island Mural:

     With the establishment of the Section of Painting and Sculpture under the Treasury Department in October 1934, Laning hoped to receive commissions to decorate Justice Department and Post Office buildings; he didn’t receive a commission because “it was felt I was too young.”  (Laning was in his late twenties at the time.)  In the fall of 1935, Laning received a call informing him that Audrey McMahon, the Director of the New York WPA Federal Art Project wanted to see him.  As Laning recalled, “It was no joke for an artist to be called to her office.  I was scared.  The Federal Art Project was now my sole means of livelihood.  It was more.  It was my life as an artist and mural painter.”    

     When Laning and Ms. McMahon met he was registered with the Works Progress Administration (WPA) as a painter.  Ms. McMahon informed Laning that Hideo Noda, who had been assigned to develop sketches for a long wall in the Administration building at Ellis Island, had vanished without a trace.  (In the early 1930s, Noda attended the California School of Fine Arts, now the San Francisco Art Institute, and in 1933 worked with famed Mexican muralist Diego Rivera on a mural in New York City’s Rockefeller Center.)  In reality, Noda was uncomfortable working with Rudolph Reimer, the Commissioner of Immigration at Ellis Island.  Commissioner Reimer had exacting standards and objected to the initial sketches prepared by Noda.  Ms. McMahon mentioned the possible difficulties in working with Reimer and informed Laning that many of the artists who had been assigned to Noda for the project were in danger of losing their jobs.  She then asked Laning to submit design drawings for the project.  Later in his life, Laning reflected upon this request by Ms. McMahon:  “It wasn’t, of course, a request, it was a command but I accepted with alacrity. . . . I don’t think either Audrey McMahon or I knew what we were doing; I don’t think either one of us counted. We were, quite simply, doing the Will of God.”  In this instance, the God may have been Commissioner Reimer.  

     Laning subsequently met with the artists he inherited for the project and “went out to Ellis Island to look at the walls in the aliens’ dining room, avoiding any contact with the commissioner [Reimer], and began to make sketches."  Laning had a 100 foot wall as a canvas and would depict the role of the immigrant in the development of America.  Laning and his assistants began conducting research on agricultural harvesting, railroad construction, coal mining, and steel manufacture.  After completing partial designs for the mural, Laning presented them to Commission Reimer, whom he described as “a big gruff man with a red face and white hair.”  After looking at Laning’s initial drawings, Reimer proclaimed, “You don’t know much about railroading, and you don’t know a damn thing about coal mining.”  Fortunately, Laning had taken an attractive young female assistant with him to the meeting.  Responding to Reimer’s criticism, she purred that “we’re only trying to please you, Mr. Commissioner.”  At that point, Reimer calmed down and provided Laning with constructive criticism about materials used for railroad ties in the 1860s; he also suggested that Laning “go home and study up on coal mining.”  Laning never returned to see Commissioner Reimer without his female assistant, including the meeting when Reimer gave his blessing to Laning’s design.  

     A Time Magazine article from September 16, 1935, detailed the progress that Laning had made within the first few weeks of his involvement with the project: 

“It was a great relief to PWA, to the College Art Association, to Architects Harvey Wiley Corbett and Chester Holmes Aldrich and to Edward Laning last week to learn that Commissioner of Immigration & Naturalization Rudolph Reimer at Ellis Island had finally approved Artist Laning's designs for murals for the dining hall at New York's immigrant station. Cheered, Muralist Laning and his two assistants, James Rutledge and Albert Soroka, hustled to get his cartoons on tempera and gesso panels as soon as possible ...

     Less than six months later, on March 4, 1936, the New York Times provided an update on Laning's progress with the mural, invoking the names of Commissioner Reimer and Audrey McMahon and providing details about the scope of the work:  "The completed mural will be some eight feet high by 110 feet long.  Among the subject material for future panels are scenes depicting the arrival of Central European immigrants, coal mining, steel mills, and lumbering."

     Laning painted the Ellis Island murals on canvas from his top floor loft on East 17th Street.  He employed three primary artists to assist with the project:  Etta Fick, James Rutlidge, and Albert Soroka.  A young cabinet maker employed by the WPA “built me a sturdy movable partition on which I stretched my canvas.”  The apparatus allowed Laning to work from home and avoid the ever-critical eye of Commissioner Reimer.  In his memoirs, Laning described a typical work day at his home studio:

“Etta and Jimmy ground pigments with a muller on the top of a big marble-slabbed butcher’s table we’d picked up at a Village auction and laid ground colors on the canvas.  At noon we’d stop for an hour for lunch at a table near the window.  We would discuss the mural which crowded over us as we ate.  Albert, my model, would ask us to criticize the painting which he had made at home and brought in for our consideration.”

     When Laning and his associates had completed the murals, they invited Commissioner Reimer to the loft for inspection of their efforts.  He brought his daughter with him, and much to Laning’s delight, Reimer was gracious and complimentary.  Laning then proceeded with the installation of the individual mural panels at Ellis Island.  The project’s technical director insisted that the canvas panels be hung on the plaster walls with “a new plastic adhesive of superior quality” (as opposed to Laning’s preference for adhesive white lead).  On the first day of installation about one quarter of the panels were fixed on the walls, with corners of the panels trimmed to accommodate doors and windows in the area.  Laning, his associates, and the technical advisors left the facility with great optimism about the installation process.  However, upon their return to Ellis Island following a weekend respite, the group realized that the new plastic adhesive was a colossal failure.  Laning remembered the incident as follows:

“I saw immediately that the marvelous adhesive was a serious failure.  It had dried as hard as stone, but in the process it had swelled and blistered in pieces and had created ugly bumps and hollows in the canvas surface.  We found that no rolling or pressure would smooth out these unsightly swellings.  There was no cure but to cut through the painting at many points, dig out the blistered lumps of hardened glue and patch the injured painting as best we could.  That night I went home in despair.”

It took Laning and crew several days to repair the damage; suffice it to say, the final installation of the canvas panels was conducted using the adhesive white lead.  Laning recalled that the completed mural was unveiled in the spring of 1937, with the Federal Art Project targeting such luminaries as “a representative from the Mural Painters Society, Audrey McMahon, Commissioner Reimer and Roger Cahill."  On February 25, 1938, the New York Times reported on the previous evening's formal unveiling of The Role of the Immigrant in the Industrial Development of America at Ellis Island (download the article here).