Griffith Observatory, Los Angeles, California
Photo by contributor Colby Stearns
Central rotunda ceiling murals by Hugo Ballin.
From the Griffith Observatory web site:
On the vaulted ceiling and upper walls of the W. M. Keck Foundation Central Rotunda are Griffith Observatory's greatest artistic treasure: the Hugo Ballin Murals. Workers have carefully and completely restored the murals so that they appear as they did when first painted by muralist, film producer, and author Hugo Ballin (1879-1956) in 1934.
Medieval cathedrals told stories in stone. The Ballin ceiling mural celebrates classical celestial mythology, with images of Atlas, the four winds, the planets as gods, and the twelve constellations of the zodiac. The eight rectangular Ballin wall murals depict the "Advancement of Science" with panels on astronomy, aeronautics, navigation, civil engineering, metallurgy and electricity, time, geology and biology, and mathematics and physics.
In addition to Griffith Observatory, Hugo Ballin's murals also appear throughout Los Angeles in such noted buildings as the Wilshire Boulevard Temple, the Los Angeles Times Building, and Los Angeles City Hall Council Chambers.
