 Good afternoon. My name is Aaron Goldberg and I am a board member of the Lost Mule Project. We are extremely excited today. This occasion with the visit by the ambassador from Lithuania to the United States, Audra Plepite. And we also have the pleasure of our former governor and ambassador to Switzerland, Madeleine M. Cunin. And behind me we also have our coordinating conservator, Richard Kirschner, and our conservator, Constance Silver, who along with Jennifer Baker has been extraordinarily helpful in bringing us to this stage. This has been a very long journey. The preservation of the lost mural is extremely important. It represents a lost genre of wooden synagogues that were in Eastern Europe. There were hundreds and hundreds of them, certainly across Lithuania and other parts of Eastern Europe. There is really nothing of this size, scope and magnitude, according to Dr. Samuel Gruber, who is a PhD and specialist in Jewish art and monuments and who has written about us and lectured about us several times. My co-founder of the Lost Mule Project, Jeff Potash, is not with us today, but I would also like to extend my thanks to him. And we have been on this journey with Rick since 1986, and it is delightful for us to stand in front of the mural and to show people the mural, and we hope to finish the full restoration of the mural between October and December of this 2021 year. The cleaning will actually be completed by the end of August, and we've already made arrangements with our conservators and master painter to begin work during the first week of October, 2022-21. So without further comments by me, let me introduce Ambassador Adra Petit of the Republic of Lithuania and Ambassador to the United States. Thank you very much. Good morning and first of all, thank you very much and I'm Goldberg and Gershne and everybody who is here today for accompanying us to see this piece of magnificent art and also a piece of magnificent and emotional history here in Burlington. I just arrived to United States or to DC to be frank. It's my first visit to outside the DC to any states and I'm very proud and very honored that one of the first stops is Burlington as well and meeting you personally and also the community and to see how much you did for preserving Lithuanian Jewish heritage and this piece of history. It's very emotional for me and for all the Lithuanians to see this mural and to hear the whole history of that. As you mentioned in Lithuania there were big Jewish community, lots of synagogues and hundreds of synagogues, wooden synagogues which were not so typical in other parts probably of the world, but that was very typical for Lithuania. Unfortunately now we have probably more than 90 synagogues survived but as far as I know in none of them survived such a miracle as this mural so there were all other synagogues also had some murals or something so it's historical to think how we have to go to Vermont to Burlington also to learn about Lithuanians history and heritage Lithuanian Jewish so and that's why thank you very much for all your efforts as well to preserve it, to save it, preserve, to restore and make now public and known for everyone, for community here, for Lithuanian but it's also worldwide though. I think it's the project it's not local project it's maybe efforts are some you people are like local from here but this project is it has value worldwide I think it's really to see magnificent piece so it's very proud and it's very also I'm very happy that Lithuania government also supported at least a little of this of this project and we really will heartedly support it until the end and will promote and we talked already about some common project what we can do how to to make it more public and known for the whole world not only for Burlington, Vermont, US or Lithuania but I think it's that should be a matter of the whole and Jewish communities and the whole Lithuanians and world world communities as well and it's very symbolic that last year we celebrated years of the Lithuanian Jewish community Litvaks so there were many many projects in Lithuania unfortunately COVID pandemic didn't allow us to do so many projects as we wanted but this project was supported as well so one of of that piece of the whole efforts done to to support, to remember and to give the new life for the Lithuanian Jewish culture and that so thank you very much thank you and thank you again thank you everyone who is part of this project and I can ensure that Lithuania government, Lithuania embassy and this would be also one of important partners in in this effort as well thank you thank you ambassador if you'll stay near the podium and former governor and ambassador former governor of Vermont and ambassador to Switzerland Madeleine Mae Keunen is going to greet the ambassador and also share her thoughts on the international and importance of the lost mural thank you thank you very much for being here madam ambassador you give us a great honor and give more meaning to the lost mural I mean the reason Lithuania is in the picture is that the first Jewish settlements in Burlington were from a village in Lithuania and my roots don't go back there but I sort of married into them and having the ambassador here is a great privilege for us and we really appreciate your visit and your remarks I mean the the mural in a way is no longer lost it's been found here at Ohavi Zedek synagogue and it has been cleaned which is almost finished and the contrast between what you see now or what you saw six months ago is quite dramatic you know why is the mural important well in one sense it's a story of survival that the mural was lost behind a wall in a building which most recently has been an apartment building it was known by a few who used to pray there years ago but uh Avangover we discovered it and we moved it from down in central Burlington in the old north end up here and it was a wonderful celebration it was like a parade we marched with it and here it stands where it can be viewed by many people and it's not only a Jewish story survival it's an immigrant story of survival so that people who trace their roots back to Italy to Ireland to Bosnia wherever they can identify with the story of Jewish and of immigrant survival and of becoming a part of the American community so the board has worked hard to restore it to make it available to school children to adults we've had visitors from all over and it's it's now a living thing again and no matter what your religion if you look at it you feel some of the power of this mural somehow it reaches out to you with meaning so we're very grateful for all the donors for all the supporters the work continues it's a project that probably will never be completely done because we want to reach out to educators and others but it is now beautiful as well as meaningful in a religious and in a general ecumenical sense so again I thank you for coming you've been very kind and thank you for your remarks and these are two videos one is the story of the mural and one is Dr. Gruber's lectures so thank you again very much thank you very much it's very emotional thank you and project as well and really they'll have to do everything possible that this project would would be completed on time and as you mentioned it's not anymore lost mirror I think it's found mural and the mural which is really will shine and get together many and communities people and to be a wonderful example and and story about the personal life the community's lives but also world world history part of that thank you thank you very much our coordinating conservator and our conservator will be available for questions afterwards if you'd like and we look forward to this campaign the for the full restoration of the lost mural we have received both local state and national and international support the mural has been recognized internationally as a very significant piece of both art of both art in terms of the the scope and magnitude of the actual mural itself and how it represents this whole lost genre of wooden paint wooden murals that are now lost to most of our art history and most of most places in the world um there are this the mural has a remarkable story of its artist and the move and the rescue and the and all of that information is on our website but we'd be happy to provide you with any materials we also have pictures of the mural every step of this process has been documented from the beginning of the in 1986 till now and so we have uh we we expect to have a some type of educational project that will be both online and we hope physically about the lost mural and the the original community in burlington of jewish immigrants which was called Little Jerusalem and about all the other immigrant groups that were in burlington so thank you very much we appreciate your coming we also have a statement from Mayor Weinberger on behalf of the city of burlington it is my great pleasure to welcome ambassador adre Pita of Lithuania to Burlington Vermont i am thrilled to welcome you to our city especially at the site of the lost mural painted by benzine black upon his arrival to burlington from Lithuania in 1910 the lost mural continues to serve as a defining pillar of the jewish community in burlington and around the world thanks to the incredible support from the Lithuanian government the mural has withstood the trials of time and history now during this time of pandemic and geopolitical tension it is essential that the united states maintain maintain strong collaborative relationships with our allies like Lithuania ambassador Pita I hope you enjoy your time in burlington and are able to visit areas like the waterfront and the church street marketplace that make our city unique we hope to have you back soon sincerely Mayor Murrow Weinberger and the mayor sends his regrets but we're delighted that we were able to get his statement and thank you so much okay i'm rick kerstner i'm the coordinated conservator for lost mural project uh connie silver that we've seen in the other pictures is our connie just step in so they have a picture of you for the record and or even take your mask off but connie's are supervising conservator and the one that's doing the actual work on the the painting and i can describe what's been going on for the last few months one of the stages of the conservation and restoration and so what you saw on some of the footage that's already been filmed is we've just finished the the cleaning of the really thick and discoloring varnish under mural and that took about four months two conservators working on it full time and now we're finally down to very close to the what it's exposed as the original paint with maybe a fine layer of dirt and a bit of varnish still in some areas and as we get down to those colors that's when our senior conservator can really see what's going on with the painting and now she's working on the final cleaning to get through those layers and also she's going to be working with one of her friends it's a master painter what's henry's last name posby azalsky yes and henry's from down in pennsylvania has worked with connie for many years uh at this stage and that will be the actual in painting of the losses moving forward and also the uh the uh replication of the design areas of the painting and so connie'll do much of the first all of the losses have to be filled with a spackle like compound to bring them up to level and we have a a sculptor coming in to help with that and then connie will do much of the in painting of the smaller areas by in painting we mean you just match the colors you don't go over top of the any of the original paint you just you just paint in what was lost and then henry working with connie will be doing the painting of the design areas and we anticipate this will start beginning of october and we'll go through october november and december and hopefully finish up by the end of the year there's still some fundraising to do to to sponsor all this but they have most of the funds available now and we hope to hope to get this done in the near future the all of this needs to be in context with where this started many years ago which in 1985 or 86 i was called in one as conservative shelver museum because they are trying to save the mural when the building was turned into apartment buildings where it was located before and they wanted to give it to a museum but it would have cost too much to move it at that point and it really didn't fit with shelver as a museum mission so that's where i suggested that it be put behind a wall i said you don't have to destroy it just build a wall in front of it and that wall in front of it with apartment on the other side that was heated and cooled and and all over the years and the hot sun on the slate roof on the south side of it caused some of the paint to to come off so it was very fragile when it was when it came back up when they took that wall down it was very fragile and all the paint had to be consolidated and reattached and connie did that over probably six or seven months probably at that point it was a lot a lot of a lot of work six months and but that was the first thing that had to happen and then we already have the footage on the move and what we had to do to prepare for the move to build a steel cage around it to literally take a piece of the roof out of the building and replace that so they continue usually for apartments and that was done with a big crane and and put on a truck and moved over here even to be able to do that to move the mural at all had to uh they had we had to put facings on the paintings with me we had to put silk uh cover on the painting with varnish so the paint wouldn't come up and then we had to consolidate with a wax like material on top of that so the plaster in case it started coming off and went during the move during the vibrations and then we had to put foam on top of that and plywood on top of that so those many many steps I think are already are recorded uh before the move and we have it in this footage so it just gives you this has been a project now since 2014 I think since it came out from behind the wall and so 2014 2015 2016 it was moved to here and then there's been five years wait while they raise funds for the next phase which was the cleaning uh that has just been completed and Connie is completing the very final portion of that and then the last portion will be the in-painting and the final varnishing uh and and the reconstruction design hello everyone my name is Aaron Goldberg I am speaking to you from the Rabbi Joshua and Catherine Chase in Holocaust Garden at the Havasetic synagogue in Burlington Vermont which houses the lost mural in the public lobby of the building I would just like to chat for a little bit about my personal connection to the lost mural it is fair to say that the lost mural and I have had a very long journey together the lost mural was painted in 1910 by a Lithuanian immigrant I named Benzion Black I did not see the lost mural until the 1970s in college I started to take some courses and went to Europe and and was able to find out a little bit about lost about lost mural paintings I finished college in 1978 and went to and I finished college in 1979 having studied American studies and immigrant history and religious history I became the archivist of the Havasetic synagogue in 1985 that seemed to be a good fit for me I was very interested and I'm still interested in our community's history its immigrant history and it's it's a family groups that came from Lithuania which enriched this community immensely my own family were some of those people from Lithuania along with many of our other community members including my coarchivist and of Havasetic synagogue and co-founder of the lost mural project Jeff Potash both of our families came from Lithuania in just after 2007 a series of books came out which featured the lost genre of the wooden painted synagogues and these describe the hundreds of painted synagogues that existed in Lithuania and many other parts of Eastern Europe some of which still survive in other parts of the world but none of which survive in Lithuania and most of Europe there are some but not many in 1985 just after I became the archivist and I succeeded Myron Samison who was the former archivist of a Havasetic synagogue for over 40 years I was then trying to figure out a way to preserve the heritage of the lost mural and I worked with Rick Kirschner who was then with the Shove Museum and is still with us on this project now and Jeff Potash and George Solomon and to frame to put the mural behind a false wall in order for it not to be destroyed during a apartment renovation the mural was then had previously been used as a was then in a building which was a former synagogue a chaiotum synagogue and after it was the chaiotum synagogue it became a commercial warehouse it was when it was when it was a commercial warehouse it had many different uses but I remember it in the 70s as Harry Will Carpet Master the mural extended not just above the arc of the Torah scrolls but also extended over the entire ceiling of the chaiotum synagogue over the women's prayer gallery and the painter Benzine Black both painted it with the full colors in the front all the wonderful colors and then the heaven was blue sky with with clouds and musical instruments and cherubim the artist spent six months painting the lost mural on scaffolding and was paid the grand sum of two hundred dollars according to Myron Samuelson's records our after my return from Europe in about 2007 where I went to when I went to Lithuania I I realized that our suspicions about the significance the important artistic cultural and historical significance of the lost mural had been confirmed and we then sought more information from other international and national consultants and statewide consultants in 2010 after we opened the lost mural wall and took some photographs and discussed this further with them in the mural after much work by an extraordinary team of people who are featured on our website and the entire process is featured on our website we were able to stabilize the paint on the mural house it in a steel frame lift the mural with a crane place it on a truck move the truck up to a Hava Zedek synagogue have the crane lifted again onto our landing pad lift it again to install wheels under it and push the mural into the synagogue it was then raised by hand using chains to five suspension rods which are suspended from the i-beams which are in the ceiling of the Hava Zedek synagogue public lobby the mural weighs 6500 pounds now it weighed 7500 pounds when the floor of the mural was still there when it was being raised the mural was then was raised to a height of 11 feet which was the exact height that it was looked at from the ground up in the old Hava in the old Khayatum synagogue and and attached to the suspension rods each of which is capable of holding 6500 pounds individually the mural has the mural is like a magnet to me I am drawn and have been continuously drawn in drawn to the mural and into the mural it serves as a time portal to remind us of our immigrant history and our artistic history and cultural history it is as Madeline is as former governor of Vermont Madeline Cunin also former ambassador to Switzerland has described the lost mural is a symbol of hope over despair and freedom over oppression it is a unique immigrant symbol for the state of Vermont and for immigrants everywhere it is our hope that we will be able to completely restore the mural to its original to the original artist vision we have been extraordinarily successful in changing and transforming the colors of the mural only to understand that the colors of the mural themselves were not what we thought in 1986 when we took the archival slides of them we learned that the lost mural itself when it was in the old synagogue building on Hyde street had transformed its colors so that because the charcoal dust and grime and soot that was in the air actually changed the physical attributes of many of the paints so the for instance the the current blue curtains had been changed to green the original colors were blue and the current colors i'm sorry and the i'm going to start over on that when the when the lost mural slides were taken in 1986 the colors of the mural we thought were that we were looking at were the original colors it turns out that is not the case the building was heated this the old synagogue building on Hyde street was heated by charcoal and the charcoal dust and soot and grime and the charcoal particulates literally transformed the attributes of the colors of the paint so that they showed to us as different colors that are now being revealed so if you compare these colors from 1986 to the colors of 2015 which were uncovered and have most recently been uncovered in 2021 you will see a completely different set of primary colors the colors that you do see are symbolic of the biblical tent of the tabernacles it is written in the book of exodus and the book of numbers that the tent of the tabernacles consisted of an outer courtyard and an inner courtyard the inner courtyard housed the ten commandments themselves the high priest would enter from the outer courtyard into the inner courtyard and go through a set of curtains starting with an exterior set of red curtains and blue curtains and purple curtains and the those are the the the red and the blue curtains are described literally in the book of numbers and the book of exodus so what benzyne black has done is painted his his vision of what the temper of the what the tent of the tabernacles look like and he's changed it a little bit because the four the four posts the four posts that are described in the in the bible have been replaced by pillars and those pillars are marbleized and they represent the pillars from the temple mount and in Jerusalem Israel it's now been over 30 years that my friends and I have been working on this project Jeff potash Richard Kirchner myself and an architect named Marcel Bowden were the original planning team we have all been part of this process now we have been consulting with Marcel also and we are extraordinarily pleased and delighted and surprised with what we are seeing the colors it's like opening up a it's like opening up a new layer of a gift box every time you come into the lost mural now it was being worked on by the conservationists the colors are simply dazzling and the fact that we have done this with this extraordinary construction team stabilization team rescue team conservation team and cleaning team and then the full restoration along with our curators and our advisors and we've had many advisors in 2019 just before we embarked upon the campaign to clean the mural the national museum of American history and its director Joshua Perlman and Peter Monzo who is the Lily endowed chair and curator of religion at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC they chaired a conference with many of our museum leaders in the state of Vermont in order to help us prioritize what the what the next steps should be for the lost mural project and out of that came the realization that the first step and the most important step was to restore was to clean the mural and if we could restore the mural the problem with the with the the reason that was so important was that the varnishes that were on the mural were accelerating at a were that the varnishes that were on the mural were accelerating their rate of hardening so that the rate of hardening of the varnish on the mural was that was happening at an accelerating pace. As it got darker and darker we might have been placed in an intractable put in a position where the paint would have become the paint would have become an intractable and we would not have been able to restore the paint's original colors. Now we've been able to do that with the assistance of both extraordinary paint analysts and testing persons Susan Buck and Amy Cole Ives have been involved in that effort and our extraordinary conservationist Constance Silver and Jenny Baker and previously work done by Emily Phillips. We could not have done this without the assistance of our local community, our state community, our national community and the international community. It is our fondest hope and desire that we are fully able to restore the mural this year and that we will then begin working on an educational project to share the mural with people worldwide and just tell the story of the lost mural, its journey, the journey of the black art of Benzine black and the black family to the United States and his own story and the story of the painters of the lost murals that has never quite been told in this manner because we now have such a special piece in our possession for the world to see which can be shared because of the wonders of electronics all over the world and where and set to celebrate the lives of the people who prayed before the lost mural and others like it. Thank you very much.