Art at the Panama Canal

Add art appreciation to your Panama canal tours with its murals.

The New York craftsman William B. Van Ingen was authorized to re-make the development of the waterway by boss architect George W. Goethals. Van Ingen had accomplished extensive notoriety for his paintings in the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. also, the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia. For the Panama Canal he painted a progression of paintings covering around 1,000 square feet in four scenes which clearly depict the Gaillard Cut at Gold Hill, where the trench goes through the Continental Divide; the building of the spillway of Gatun Dam, which dams the Chagres River to make the Gatun Lake; development of a Lock Miter Gate; and the Miraflores Locks close to the Pacific access to the channel. 

The Panama Canal paintings 

To finish the work, Van Ingen had the assistance of two aides, C.T. Berry and Ira Remsen. Amid two visits to Panama in 1914, they made charcoal portrayals of the waterway site and of the development work. Van Ingen then painted the paintings on partitioned boards in his New York studio. The boards were transported to Panama and introduced over a 3-day period in January 1915 under the craftsman's close to home supervision. The artworks have the qualification of being the biggest gathering of paintings by an American craftsman in plain view outside the United States. W. Goethals is attributed with having the premonition to guarantee that a record of the great work included in the building of the channel was protected in this artistic expression, so that all who come after power wonder about what was achieved, as well as admire the sheer responsibility of the laborers and the sum total of what who have been included, as the years progressed, in its operation and organization. 

The wall paintings were restored in 1993 by craftsmanship conservator Anton Rajer, of Madison, Wisconsin. Amid the protection exertion, more than 22,000 cotton swabs were utilized to clean the wall paintings of soil and grime, and also old over-paint that was covering numerous regions of the painting. Today the wall paintings can be seen in the Panama Canal Administration Building