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It’s not every day that New York’s most famous house of worship gets a glow-up. But this fall, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the 146-year-old Gothic Revival landmark on Fifth Avenue, will unveil its largest commissioned artwork since the cathedral first opened. And yes, it’s a showstopper.
Cardinal Timothy Dolan announced that Brooklyn-based artist Adam Cvijanovic has been tapped to create a monumental mural that stretches 25 feet high and wraps around the cathedral’s entrance vestibule. Titled What’s So Funny About Peace, Love and Understanding (Elvis Costello fans, take note), the work will be officially dedicated during Mass on Sunday, September 21.
Cvijanovic’s sweeping tableau pays tribute to the generations of immigrants who have made New York City what it is today, while also tipping a hat to the city’s first responders. Inspired by the Apparition at Knock in Ireland—a vision witnessed in 1879, the same year St. Patrick’s was consecrated—the mural marries sacred imagery with the very secular hustle of New York’s history. Think saints and angels hovering above, while Irish immigrants stream ashore on one panel and modern-day arrivals from every corner of the globe take their place on another.
The cast of characters is vast, realistic and larger than life. Saint Frances Cabrini, patron saint of immigrants, makes an appearance, as does Dorothy Day of Catholic Worker fame, New York’s first Archbishop John Hughes and Al Smith, the former governor and first Catholic presidential nominee. There’s also Pierre Toussaint, the Haitian-born philanthropist buried in the cathedral’s crypt, plus Saint Kateri Tekakwitha, the first Native American saint. It’s basically a who’s who of New York’s immigrant and Catholic history, all rendered in Cvijanovic’s luminous, sky-filled style with rays of gold leaf tying the eras together.
Cvijanovic, a self-taught painter known for sprawling, site-specific works, says the mural intentionally flattens time: “Everything exists at once in a heavenly realm where there is no passage of time.” In other words, saints, first responders and everyday New Yorkers all stand shoulder to shoulder.
For a cathedral that welcomes 5 million visitors a year, the piece is designed as both a sacred welcome mat and a very New York reminder: This city was—and still is—built by immigrants.
And in case you’re wondering? Yes, you will literally have to look up to everyone.