Nightingale Mural Returns Home To Falmouth
The 42-panel mural painted by Falmouth artist Lloyd Turner Nightingale and his wife, Adeline, has returned to Falmouth after spending the last 77 years in the Fellowship Hall of the FC Phillips Company in Stoughton.
Library Director Linda Collins told the Library Board of Trustees on Tuesday, March 8, that the mural has been temporarily moved to the Falmouth Public Library until a permanent home can be found.
“They’ve never been viewed by the public, only the people who worked at the machine shop,” Ms. Collins said. “You say, ‘what does this have to do with the library?’ Well, I think the library collects information and information comes in all forms and this is a mural [telling] the story of a boy who goes on a whaling trip for two or three years and then he comes back to Falmouth. You can see the Katharine Lee Bates home, you can see the Congregational Church. It’s a significant Falmouth story.”
The murals were successfully moved from Stoughton to Falmouth with the help of Falmouth builder Michael Duffany and local artist Karen Rinaldo. Ms. Rinaldo spoke with the Enterprise in February, prior to the moving of the murals, and said that she reached out to Mr. Duffany to help with the relocation because she knew about his passion for restoration and historic projects.
“The nice thing about them coming back here is that it’s sort of a homecoming, so to speak,” Ms. Rinaldo said. “They were created here and now they’ll be coming back here.”
Ms. Rinaldo is also the one who reached out to the library with the idea to gauge its interest in the mural and perhaps housing or displaying it temporarily. To her pleasant surprise, there was a great deal of interest and it came just in time.
“I was really excited about this project,” Ms. Collins said. “Why are they here at the library? Because the wrecking ball was coming and we were tight and had to find a safe haven for them.”
The trustees discussed potentially displaying portions of the mural in the main library and mentioned the Lawrence School auditorium as another potential and appropriate location, citing another Nightingale painting on display there.
Ms. Collins clarified that she is not proposing to use any library funds on this project and that the only library involvement would potentially be her assistance in seeking grant funding to clean and restore the mural.
“Where they’ll end up, I don’t know,” she said. “We need to find a home for them… It’s one step at a time. Yay, we rescued them. Next, we’re going to get them cleaned and restored.”