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Updated Oct. 17, 10:45 a.m. | Posted Sept. 29, 4 a.m.

Admirers of a beloved longtime college professor and artist are working to save a mural he created decades ago. 

The mural created in 1966 has been in storage at the Rourke Art Museum and Gallery in Moorhead for more than a decade. Standing 9 feet tall and stretching 54 feet long, it was originally painted on canvas attached to a wall in the library at Moorhead’s Concordia College but was removed after it suffered water damage.

“Murals’ fates are often tied to the buildings that they exist in, so it’s not always possible to save and preserve them,” said Rourke Director Jonathan Rutter, who feels fortunate the gallery gained possession of the massive painting.

 launched the art department at Concordia College in 1940. He was a prolific artist, creating many murals and large mosaic images in churches and schools.

He started the tradition of designing and creating large murals to stand behind the Concordia College choir during the popular annual Christmas concert.

He also worked on a smaller scale with pen and ink, watercolor and oil paint.

“He’s really part of our local art historical canon. So, if you're a collector who wants to represent the great artists of our region, Running is going to be on your list,” said Rutter.

Running created the mural in the Concordia library in 1966, a series of images representing the progression of life from childhood to old age.

“This one’s exceptional because it’s the last large-scale work that Running did before he died seven years later. The composition is exquisite, and it’s complicated,” said retired Minnesota State University Moorhead professor Mark Strand, who kick-started this project with a donation to restore the first of the mural’s 13 panels. 

Running studied in Iowa with the iconic American painter Grant Wood. He also studied at the Instituto Allende in the tradition of Diego Rivera and other notable Mexican muralists.

Strand says this mural shows the influence of that experience. 

Restoring 54 feet of floor-to-ceiling art isn’t easy or cheap. Professional restoration bids were prohibitively expensive, so former Running student and longtime Minneapolis artist Mark Larson took on the project.

“Being that Cy was a teacher and mentor of mine, I really had a personal interest in seeing that this piece was restored, and for his legacy as well,” said Larson.

“I’m just thrilled that it didn’t go to the trash heap, and so grateful to the guys who said, ‘let’s rescue this,’” said Anne Sovik, Cyrus Running’s daughter.

Sovik was a junior at Concordia in 1966 and often studied in the library reading room where her father was painting.

“Dad would come in, ready to work and he would see me and he didn’t want to embarrass me. So, he would sidle past my table and just slip me a little piece of dentine gum,” she recalls. “That was his little way of saying ‘that’s my daughter.’”

Larson has spent about 250 hours restoring the first three panels, the most heavily damaged part of the mural.

He’s been struck by the intricate design of the long narrow painting.

“It’s very difficult to design a space like that and Running was an absolute master at breaking up space and positive, negative shapes. And he did a brilliant job on this one in particular, designing such a long awkward space,” said Larson.

The time-consuming restoration process involved underlaying the original canvas with new canvas and an aluminum plate for stability, all done to meet archival restoration standards.

It was a challenge to match the color palette that Rutter calls “charmingly midcentury, with variations of green, ochre, and chartreuse.”

The figures in the mural showing the progression of age are stoic and unsmiling, said Larson, who jokes perhaps that’s a Lutheran influence.  

Running had a sense of humor, said Strand, and even performed a musical comedy act called “I hate music” which he often took on the road.

“He would play the piano and the trumpet and entertain these men who were sitting there in the church basement with their white long sleeve shirts rolled up smoking cigarettes and drinking black coffee,” said Strand.

Humor is reflected in quotations and bits of graffiti interspersed across the mural.

“The mural was about this Latin saying that when we’re young, we’re sort of brash and rash and when we’re older, we become wise,” said Strand. And frankly, I don’t think Running fully believed that. I mean, he was still a kid at 53 when he did that mural.”

In one panel, “toads make warts” is scrawled on a wall. In another — “Frankie loves Mia” — a contemporary pop culture reference to the marriage of singer Frank Sinatra and actress Mia Farrow.

Three restored panels of the mural are on display at the Rourke Museum in Moorhead through Oct. 15 along with works by many of Running’s students who went on to professional art careers.

The fully restored mural will go on display in October 2024.

Correction: This story has been corrected to reflect Running's education and training in Mexico.

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A Moorhead, Minn., art gallery is working to save a large mural painted more than half a century ago. The mural was created by Cyrus Running, who started the art department at Concordia College in Moorhead.

Saving art — and history — in Moorhead

Dan Gunderson | MPR News

a painting of a child reaching for a fire alarm

Courtesy Mark Larson

a man points to artwork hanging on a wall

Saving art — and history — in Moorhead

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