Murality

Viewers often think of art as propelled by inspiration, but for Robert Evans ’79, meticulous prep work is essential for large wall murals that can stretch 50 to 60 feet or more. “It all comes down to planning and not getting lost on the wall,” says Evans, whose work appears at the Smithsonian Museum of American History, the New England Aquarium, George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate and museums and visitor centers around the country.

Evans credits his Dartmouth training in trompe l’oeil painting with helping him create hyper-realistic scenes, and years spent painting theater and opera sets with teaching him to work on a large scale.

At Dartmouth the art major admired the famous Orozco mural series The Epic of American Civilization as a “monumental piece, unsparing in its commentary on history and culture.” But instead of going on to create political murals—commissions that are increasingly rare—he took his skillset to museums, where he’s charged with representing a culture, concept or historical moment as faithfully as possible.

“It’s art with ajob,” Evans says. “It’s anarrowniche that I evolved into but one that has a lot of variety within it.” He consults historical documents, scouts natural landscapes firsthand, and confers with anthropologists, biologists, naturalists and historians. All that research helps him create scenes—an Everglades habitat, pioneers on the Oregon Trail, the workings of a human cell—that are most effective when they obscure the labor behind them.

“In a strange way, it’s art that, the more successful it is, the less the viewers will think of it as art,” Evans says. “They’ll just think that they’re ‘there.’ ”

Kaitlin Bell Barnett ’05