The Movement of Time

As indicated by the mural’s title, The Movement of Time offers a dynamic interpretation of history, which artist Fred Conway rendered in a kaleidoscopic arrangement of overlapping forms and colors.  Conway described the mural as depicting “the hustle and bustle of Kansas City as it moves into the Modern Age.”

From left to right, the painting’s upper section shows the profile of a Native American man wearing an elaborate headdress, a group of tee-pees, the outlines of horned cattle heads, a blue steam locomotive with a yellow bell, a Missouri River steamboat’s pair of red smokestacks, bales of wheat, a rocket, and the stylized profile of President Harry S. Truman formed by the letters T-R-U-M-A-N.

The mural’s lower section depicts a rugged frontiersman sporting a long beard, a wagon-train boss holding a rifle and a whip, a pioneer woman with her small child and baby, a carpetbagger wearing a blue hat and pink shirt, a prospector in a raccoon-tail hat, an artist riding a penny-farthing bicycle, a gambler with an ace-of-diamonds, a fireman, a motorist in an antique yellow car, an organ grinder with a pet monkey on his shoulder, a police officer, a newsboy, a tuba player in an election-day parade, and several other figures.  The scene also includes numerous text inscriptions, such as Lewis & Clark, Pony Express, and Vote.  Upon completion of the mural, Conway said that he wished for it “to become part of the imagination and interest of the countless people who pass it, and will continue to pass it several times each day.”