Barb Economon is the Visual Resources Specialist at the Walker Art Center
In 1976, a Dystopian River and Inflatable “Plumes of Fire”
Muralist Terry Schoonhoven was commissioned by the Walker to create his mural No River Wall Painting for the 1976 exhibition The River: Images of the Mississippi. It loomed large—24 by 35 feet—and foreboding in the Walker’s outer lobby, depicting the riverfront as dystopian industrial district, going to rack and ruin in mounding decay, a parched riverbed supporting barges going nowhere and tipped oil drums lodged in the scorched silt.