MANHATTAN — SAINTS OF THE CHURCH STAND NEXT TO CONTEMPORARY IMMIGRANTS AND CIVIC FIGURES in a new mural, titled “What’s So Funny About Peace, Love and Understanding,” unveiled recently in the lobby of New York City’s iconic St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Among the figures honored are Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini, who arrived in 1889 from Italy to tend to immigrants in South Brooklyn, and Servant of God labor reformer and journalist Dorothy Day, who was born on Brooklyn Heights’ Pineapple Street on Nov. 8, 1897. The Archbishop of New York, Timothy Cardinal Dolan, commissioned the work to bring awareness to the cathedral’s historic role as a sanctuary for immigrants.
The mural’s artist, Adam Cvijanovic, is a Boston native who works from his studio in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. He is best known for expansive, site-specific works that integrate art into architectural space, and his paintings often depict historical and imagined landscapes with a focus on the relationship between place, memory and American cultural narratives.
Venerable Pierre Toussaint and NY’s first Cardinal John Hughes are among those pictured.
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