A Brooklyn artist was selected by the Archdiocese of New York to work on a large mural in the interior of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the first permanent artwork commissioned in its 146-year history.
Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York, on Thursday said artist Adam Cvijanovic is working on a 25-foot mural, which will transform three walls within the cathedral’s Fifth Avenue entrance vestibule into a vast, encompassing vision of sacred and secular history.
The mural depicts dozens of individual figures—historic, contemporary and eternal, many at life size or larger—in Cvijanovic’s light-flooded, strikingly realistic style. It honors the sacred event known as the Apparition at Knock, celebrating the faith of generations of immigrants to New York City, and recognizing the commitment to service among the city’s first responders.
The mural, titled What’s So Funny About Peace, Love, and Understanding, will be dedicated during a Mass on Sunday, Sept. 21, 2025.
"With this mural, the archdiocese joins the Church’s long tradition of exhibiting extraordinary artworks in our places of worship," Cardinal Dolan said in a statement. "It is all the more meaningful that we do so while honoring the Apparition at Knock, which connects us profoundly to the Irish immigrants who did so much to build the Archdiocese and St. Patrick’s. The mural also recognizes the contributions of a multigenerational host of great individuals and guardians of the city and pays tribute to the immigrants of many lands who continue to bring their faith and hope to New York."
Cvijanovic said the figures in the mural are realistic, but the narrative is abstract.
"Everything exists at once in a heavenly realm where there is no passage of time," he said. "The different eras are unified by the sky that runs across the entire mural, and by the rays of gold leaf that illuminate the space of the sacred figures and reflect onto the realm below. Each human figure, whether historic and renowned or contemporary and anonymous, realistically portrays an individual model, in keeping with the Church’s insistence on the dignity and worth of every person."
When visitors and parishioners look up, you'll see dozens of people, including immigrants and sacred figures, he said.
"My hope is that when you view them all spread across the full span of the mural, you’ll feel how all of humanity is welcomed here," said Cvijanovic, who was chosen to create the mural through a competitive process initiated by the Archdiocese of New York and managed by curator Suzanne Geiss and the advisory firm Seven Willow Collaborative.
In addition to depictions of Irish immigrants of the 19th and 20th centuries, contemporary immigrants and first responders, other historic figures will include Saint Frances Cabrini, the Italian-born founder of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, patron saint of immigrants, and the first U.S. citizen to be canonized as a saint; Dorothy Day, the Brooklyn-born founder of the Catholic Worker Movement and editor of the Catholic Worker newspaper; and Saint Kateri Tekakwitha, born into a Mohawk family in 1656 and the patron saint of Indigenous peoples, and the first Native American to be canonized as a saint.
Born in Cambridge, Mass. in 1960 and based in Brooklyn, Cvijanovic is a self-taught painter best known for expansive, site-specific works that integrate art into architectural space. His paintings often depict historical and imagined landscapes, with a focus on the relationship between place, memory and American cultural narratives.
Major public commissions include 10,000 Feet, a mural depicting the Indiana countryside for the Alexander Hotel in Indianapolis; a four-panel oil painting in the Mercedes Benz stadium in Atlanta; a 20-by-20-foot ceramic tile piece for a school in Brooklyn; and a project for the Bean Federal Center in Indianapolis, for which he has created 164 individual murals totaling more than 7,000 square feet, portraying American battlefields from the colonial period to the present.
