After 40 years in darkness, the four-part endomosaic mural by Emile Norman finally sees daylight.

On Friday, May 24, Monterey History and Art Association President Gary Spradlin, along with Emile Norman Charitable Trust trustee Marc Del Piero, Monterey Library and Museums Director Brian Edwards and a couple of helpers, gathered on Tyler Street in Monterey with drills and hammers in their hands. Their mission was to open a big box that had been in storage since the 1980s.

“They haven’t been seen for 40 years,” Spradlin says about four panels that constitute the mural in the box. 

After much work and removing all the nails, the group brought to light four panels by Big Sur artist Emile Norman (1918-2009), known collectively as Casa Munras Mural, after the original place of display. 

In 1954, Casa Munras Hotel ordered the mural from Norman for its dining room. After the hotel was remodeled in the early 1980s, the mural (24 feet long and 5 feet tall) was passed to the City of Monterey with the financial help of the Bing Crosby Youth Fund, among others. 

After 40 years of deep sleep in a well-protected wooden box, the mural is back with the community and will soon be displayed in the hall of the Monterey History and Art Museum at Stanton Center.

The mixed media pieces includes such materials as ceramic, fiber, glass, wood, silk, metal, bone and more. It commemorates such important events in local history as the discovery of Monterey Bay by Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo in 1542 and the foundation of the Mission San Carlos Borromeo del Rio Carmelo (aka Carmel Mission). Next to Father Junipero Serra, the mission founder, one can see symbols of Christianity and America, but also elements of the local natural environment: pines, wild rye and grapes; next to a ram, a horse and two pelicans. There’s more—a senor and senorita in party costumes, as a symbol of early Monterey’s social life, the Custom House with its surroundings, a fisherman with a net full of fish and finally a silk whale with plastic teeth. There are even three glass carrots that represent the area as “the salad bowl of the nation.”

Since the panels were tightly wrapped in resin, the treasure hunt ended with taking out and unwrapping one panel, leaving the rest of the work to be done in the Stanton Center. There, the mural will be carefully cleaned by City of Monterey Artifacts Specialist Brianna Schwerling, and displayed in the hallway for every resident and tourist to see and admire.

The Emile Norman Charitable Trust should not be confused with the Emile Norman Arts Foundation, which takes care of Norman’s art-filled house in Big Sur.

Visit montereyhistory.org.