Miami International Airport saves iconic JFK murals

— -- A casual conversation between an airport skycap and a passenger heading home to Brazil ended up saving an art treasure from the trash.

Maybe you remember the two giant, colorful murals in the east concourse of the old American Airlines terminal at JFK airport in New York. Created by Brazilian artist Carybé, who won both first and second prize in a 1959 contest to create art for the terminal, the murals explore two very different themes of the Americas.

The darker Discovery and Settlement of the West depicts the pioneers' journey to the American West. The more colorful Rejoicing and Festivals of the Americas portrays scenes from popular folkloric celebrations held throughout North, Central and South America and includes a Seminole Indian, a cowboy, a jazz musician and other characters in representational dress. When announcing why they'd chosen these Carybé works, the architects for the JFK building said that "too many of our present day buildings are dull, monotonous, lacking in warmth, joy, gaiety." They liked the artist's imagination and use of colors.

The murals had been part of the terminal since 1960, and at 17 feet tall and more than 50 feet long each, they were hard to miss. They were also hard to care for. Over the years, the colors faded, objects the artist embedded in the pieces fell off, and layers of grime and bird droppings accumulated. So when it came time to demolish the terminal and build a new one, the plan was just to leave the site-specific murals behind and allow them to get torn down and destroyed with the building.

Saved by the bell

The idea of the murals getting demolished saddened many people who'd come to love the murals during the almost 50 years they'd been at the JFK American Airlines terminal. One of those people was Darren Hoggard. He remembered seeing those murals as a kid and, as a Skycap Captain for American Airlines at JFK, he saw them every day at work. So it was not unusual for him to chat about the murals, and their uncertain future, to passengers whom he was assisting with luggage. One of those passengers was a woman on her way home to Brazil, who looked closely at the artwork and recognized the murals as the work of Carybé, a highly respected artist from her country. She flew home determined to try to figure out how to save the murals and began calling around.