Brooklyn artist’s 25-foot-high mural “What’s So Funny About Peace, Love and Understanding” unveiled at St. Patrick’s Cathedral

The mural is the largest permanent artwork commissioned for St. Patrick’s Cathedral

A 25-foot-high mural at St. Patrick’s Cathedral created by a Brooklyn-based artist was unveiled at the church on Sept. 18.

The art, called “What’s So Funny About Peace, Love and Understanding,” was created by Boerum Hill resident Adam Cvijanovic. It is the largest permanent artwork commissioned for St. Patrick’s Cathedral since its opening in 1876.

The mural depicts dozens of individual sacred and secular figures.

It includes Irish immigrants of the 19th and 20th centuries, angels, contemporary immigrants, and the City’s first responders. It also celebrates the 1879 Apparition at Knock.

The historic figures featured include St. Frances Cabrini, Father Félix Varela, The Venerable Pierre Toussaint, Al Smith, Dorothy Day, Saint Kateri Tekakwitha, and Archbishop John Hughes.

Timothy Cardinal Dolan, Archbishop of New York, complimented the mural during the unveiling.

“It’s great,” he said. “I think you’ll agree with me aesthetically in that our goal of perking up a better drab entrance into the cathedral has been succeeded. It’s also successful devotionally, which works of art in the Catholic tradition should be,  glorifying God. It’s also, I think you’ll agree, accurate historically in that it depicts the Apparition of Knock and the coming of the immigrants and refugees to this great city.”

Cvijanovic thanked the committee that selected him and expressed his gratitude for his work being on display at the church.

“I’m actually kind of at a loss for words,” he said. “It is really an incredible privilege to have been given this opportunity, to have this space to say something about and to this city that I care so deeply about and to try to make a work of art that is of and for this institution, this church, but also for all the people of this place, this great place, which is composed of people from everywhere.”

The Archdiocese of New York invited artists to commission a mural. In 2023, following a review of international artists, six were invited to create proposals. 

Cvijanovic was later chosen by the archdiocese selection committee, an external advisory group including museum directors, prominent collectors and the curatorial group Seven Willow Collaborative. 

He said that from the beginning, an important factor of the mural to do was to make it about people and portraits, adding that everybody in the painting is an actual person. 

“They’re all portraits, including the angels,” Cvijanovic said. “That seemed to me to be a really important thing to do. To talk about the people of this city, all of them, and to have some place that people could go to in New York and feel themselves recognized and feel themselves recognized in the context of respect and hope.”

Father Enrique Salvo of St. Patrick’s Cathedral also spoke during the conference.

“Our hope is that when people enter here, and whether or not they’re coming really to sightsee or to pray, that everyone is moved by the love of God and that everyone feels truly welcome into this house of God,” he said. “This mural is such an inspiration for that because hopefully, especially as we see the immigrants in the ages, hopefully people will see themselves in the mural in some way or another and see how God has always been with us.”