The walls of Diplomat John Work Garrett’s Reading Room at Evergreen Museum & Library in Baltimore, MD, are decorated in urban landscapes in every alcove that is not already stacked with books. Completed by Mexican artist Miguel Covarrubias, the scenes in the murals depict Garrett’s various diplomatic postings over the course of his career including the Hague, Rome, Venezuela, and Argentina. Among visitors, one of the most popular works in the room is Covarrubias’ depiction of the Mall in Washington, D.C. With the city’s iconic cherry blossoms in the foreground and the Washington Monument and Capitol framing the top and bottom of the panel, Covarrubais’s work provides a picturesque and idyllic representation of the capital city.
John Work Garrett’s wife, Alice Warder Garrett, was deeply invested in the aesthetics of Evergreen’s interior. She encouraged American collectors to invest in artists whose works they felt personal connections to rather than purchasing artists because of their popularity. Covarrubias’s art was defined by strong lines and caricature-like art that would become influential in the American art world in the 1930s, particularly in the style of magazine covers like The New Yorker, which are now remembered among Americans as the publication’s signature style. Covarrubias derived much of his own influence from his interest in pre-Colombian cultures, particularly Olmec. While known for a strong tropical color palette, Covarrubias was asked by Alice Warder Garrett to subdue the colors of his panel works in Evergreen’s Reading Room. While on the surface, this mural may look like an ode to a romanticized United States, the work reveals much more about the diverse cultural make-up, influences, and tensions that went into 20th-century American art. Ultimately, this iconic urban landscape of the United States reveals the story of an artist who disseminated his interpretation of Mexican artistic influence into the panel works that ornament the room.