For the first time in decades, passersby are able to look up and take in Millard Sheets’ 40-by-16-foot “Pleasures Along the Beach” mosaic as the artist envisioned.
But instead of decorating a Home Savings & Loan branch in Santa Monica where it was first created in 1969, the mural is now a new landmark in Old Towne Orange.
After spending years broken down into pieces so it could fit in storage, the glass-tile mosaic has been painstakingly reassembled and will now welcome visitors to Chapman University’s expanded Hilbert Museum of California Art. The museum will reopen to the public on Feb. 23 after being closed for more than a year so it could also take over the building next door, nearly tripling in size.
The finished mosaic was unveiled on Tuesday, Jan. 30, in an afternoon ceremony that featured Mark Hilbert, who commissioned its reconstruction for the museum that he and his wife helped Chapman build, and Brian Worley, who oversaw the restoration of the mosaic that he first helped Sheets create as a young artist all those years ago.
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