The Surprising Origins of a World War II-Era Mural That Was Nearly Lost.

Abstract

Jack McMillen studied at the Minneapolis School of Art in the early 1930s and went on to work in the New Deal’s Federal Art Project as part of the Works Progress Administration. 1 One of McMillen’s murals still hangs on the wall of the U.S. Post Office in College Park, Georgia. Another McMillen mural is in storage at the Smithsonian. When the country entered World War II, McMillen was drafted at the age of 32 into the U.S. Army. Before he even finished boot camp he was put him in charge of a traveling art show being used to promote the sale of War Bonds (Fig. 1). McMillen traveled the country by train, setting up shop in major cities and small towns from the east to west coasts. In early 1944, immediately after basic training, McMillen quickly fell ill. He started to mysteriously lose weight, and after undergoing extensive tests at Walter Reed General Hospital, doctors determined he had a tumor obstructing his esophagus. The Army surgeons responsible for his care admitted they had never performed the kind of surgery needed to ensure his recovery, but the mass was successfully removed, and turned out to be benign. McMillen, like countless other soldiers of the day, recuperated at the Forest Glen Annex, a former girls’ school purchased by the Army for treating convalescing patients during World War II. It was here that Private McMillen painted the mural which now hangs prominently on display at the National Museum of Health and Medicine (NMHM). The semi-abstractionist painting features convalescing soldiers engaged in a wide range of activities on the Forest Glen campus, identifiable by its eclectic architecture. According to his son, Jack McMillen simply titled the original mural “Noon” (Fig. 2). In 1994, 50 years after McMillen finished the mural, NMHM learned that the painting had been bolted to a wall in a deteriorating building on the Forest Glen campus, with a leak in the ceiling. Despite extensive water damage, the generous support of the U.S. Army Office of the Surgeon General and the Borden Center for Excellence helped make its full restoration possible. Following the museum’s move to Forest Glen in 2011, the 7.1 ft × 10.6 ft mural earned a prominent spot in the National Museum of Health and Medicine, U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command, 2500 Linden Lane, Silver Spring, MD 20910. doi: 10.7205/MILMED-D-15-00395 FIGURE 1. McMillen cherished this signed photograph he received from the movie actress Linda Darnell when she attended the U.S. Army’s traveling art show in Los Angeles in 1943. (Photo courtesy of Dr. Brian A. McMillen.)