The mosaics at The Museum Center and the Greater Cincinnati Airport were created by Winold Reiss. He was commissioned to make them in 1931 to decorate the rotunda and 450 foot concourse of the new Cincinnati Union Terminal.

1. Does anyone know what the terminal was used for? (train station, then mall and now museum center)

2. What is the rotunda? (huge entryway that is bowl shaped)

3. What do you think a concourse is? (walkway from station to the trains)

4. What are mosaics? (A design on a surface made by fitting and cementing together small pieces of hard material, such as colored glass or tile.)

Winold Reiss was born Sept 16, 1886 in Karlsruhe, Germany.  He spent his early years traveling throughout Germany with his father Fritz, who was a well-known landscape artist.  He migrated to the United States in 1913, drawn by America's diverse ethnic cultures.  He was fascinated by American Indians, and traveled by train to Montana to meet them.  He included a portrait of his first friend among the Blackfeet; an Indian called Turtle, in the rotunda mosaic wall mural at Union Terminal.

5. Who has seen the mosaics at the Museum Center? 

6. What is depicted?

Reiss created two large murals depicting the settlement of southwestern Ohio and the development of transportation on the rotunda walls.  He began the arduous task of creating the gigantic murals by taking on-location photographs.  From these photos he drew large-scale drawings which were sent to craftsmen in Germany who worked from the drawings.  They made the half-inch square glass mosaic pieces and attached them to huge sheets of paper which were then shipped to Cincinnati.  Back at Union Terminal the glass was pressed into the wet plaster of the terminal walls.  When the plaster dried, the paper was peeled off and the remaining areas were plastered with colored mortar. 

The concourse was demolished in 1973 and 14 murals were moved. 

7. Who knows where they are now? (the Greater Cincinnati Airport)  

When the terminal was purchased by Southern Railway in 1972, the owners announced plans to demolish the concourse portion that contained 14 murals.  This prompted citizens to form a "Save the Terminal" commitee, which raised funds to remove and transport the murals to their new airport home.  It cost $400,000 to relocate them to the airport in 1974.  Moving the murals was a monumental task in itself.  A special protective coating was applied to the mosaics to keep the glass pieces in place and prevent chipping.  It took engineers three months just to devise a method of removing the murals from the walls. Then the murals were encased in rigid steel frames, and then crated in wood. They were transported to the airport on special trucks.  Telephone wires and overhead street signs had to be temporarily moved.  The airport board then spent $136,000 to have them installed.

Twenty years later the airport would find itself again moving five of the murals as port of Delta's massive expansion.  The second move cost $1 million for five of the murals.  

8.  How much do you think the murals are worth? (It is impossible to put a value on the murals.  As works of art, the murals are considered priceless.)  

The 14 murals at CVG Airport are a much an institution to area residents as Fountain Square or The Delta Queen.  The 20 x 20 foot mosaic masterpieces have also received national acclaim for being outstanding examples of Art Deco.   Art Deco is a modern art form characterized by its symmetrical style, intense exotic colors and rectilinear design. 

Activity:  Tile Mosaic

Tiles, clay and mosaic pieces are located in the art awareness closet.  Sample can also be located there. 

A good book to borrow from the library is "The Mosaic Idea Book" by Rosalind Wates. 738.5 qW333

While children are decorating there tiles, Explain

There are a great many different ways of making mosaics. They can be made on the surfaces of walls, floors, furniture, and even the handles of tools or weapons. The pieces themselves may be square, round. or irregular in shape.

The mosaic picture itself may be small - just a few inches across - or large enough to cover the entire wall, floor, or ceiling of a large church. In spite of their many differences, however, all mosaics have these characteristics in common: they are made of many small pieces of material cemented together into a solid mass and arranged to form a picture or design.

As far as we know, the art of making mosaics began about 10,000 years ago, when prehistoric people first began to decorate the wood or bone handles of some of their stone tools with small bits of colored stone.  Of all the artistic media, mosaics are one of the slowest and most painstaking. The finer the artist wishes his mosaic to be, the smaller the cubes he must use, and the smaller the cubes, the longer it takes to insert them into the pavement or wall he is working upon.

In our fast-moving and impatient age however, mosaics seem likely - with a few exceptions - to remain a curiosity of the past, giving useful information about life in ancient times and providing us with a lasting source of artistic pleasure.