The Library Mural by Heemong Kim was unveiled in the library lobby on October 3, 1980.
The information below is taken from the program for the unveiling.
THE MURAL
The artist has chosen to portray a selection of people who have contributed, in different ways, to the richness of the human experience, the challenge of bold ideas, and the excitement of aesthetic and intellectual discovery. His work demands some concentration from the viewer, plus a small measure of levity born of the surprise of recognition. To see this mural, to look at it truly and allow one's eyes and mind to roam with the movement generated by the interplay of images and relationships, is to begin to understand the meaning of this piece.
THE ARTIST
Heemong Kim, class of 1980, native of Korea, member of a talented family. His father, a protege of Le Corbusier, is an architect of international repute and his mother is an energetic painter. In 1977, after his freshman year at Yonse University in Seoul, Heemong enrolled at Rhode Island College. He brought with him rich cultural traditions and perceptions plus a warm gentility that touches those around him. Heemong synthesized his visual expression through courses in print technology, graphic design, art history and photography, choosing to "use photography as a tool to design with". The Adams Library Mural drmatically attests to his philosophy. Heemong continues his studies of Communications Design in the graduate program of Pratt Institute.
Program for the unveiling was provided by the Rhode Island College Archives, Special Collections Department, James P. Adams Library
Top row: Charles Darwin, Sigmund Freud
Bottom row: Albert Schweitzer, Isaac Newton, Marie Curie, Thomas Edison
Top row: Winston Churchill, Charles De Gaulle, Arturo Toscaninni
Bottom row: Claude Debussy, Johannes Brahms, Martin Luther King, Jr.
Top row: Lev Nikolevich Tolstoy, Mark Twain, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Frost
Bottom row: Walt Disney