Another Wonderland

Another Wonderland at the Museum of the City of New York reunites a long-lost mural series that artist Abram Champanier painted for the children's ward of Gouverneur Hospital on the Lower East Side. Created between 1938 and 1940 through the Works Progress Administration's federal art project, the 16-panel series reimagines Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland with the rabbit hole leading into New York City, sending Alice and her friends to the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, Coney Island and the Central Park Zoo. The murals were a gift to hospitalized children at a time before television, tablets and video games, said curator Lilly Tuttle. The art was nearly lost when the hospital closed and was abandoned in the 1960s, but the panels were rescued in 1981 by art conservators Alan and Denise Farancz and a team of volunteers, beginning a multi-decade restoration. Fourteen surviving panels and two reproductions are on view. The exhibition, whose lead supporter is the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund, opens to the public on June 6 and runs through September 27, 2026. The panels will then return downtown in a full-circle moment, installed at the NYC Health and Hospitals Gouverneur Health Care Services building.