The murals began to flake and take on their first graffiti. "The last few years it's been sort of embarrassing," Bachelder says. "I kind of wanted to put it out of its misery."
The murals will disappear soon enough. But for now, even the nicked-up version of the project carries a certain appeal. On a recent afternoon, Rick "Doc" Folkes, an East Providence man taking a photography class at Community College of Rhode Island, pulled over to line up a shot of the soon-to-be-destroyed southern wall.
"We're not supposed to take anything Hallmark," he explained, "nothing schmaltzy."
Wonderful Wickenden fit the bill.
Related:
Old school, More than words, Two sides of life, More 
- Old school
Back in 1928, a Providence Journal headline dubbed painter Hezekiah Anthony Dyer a "militant anti-Modernist." Modern art was just about showing off, he said.
- More than words
What are we to make of Robert Indiana? His is generally considered part of the Pop art group of artists who came into prominence in the late '60s, along with Andy Warhol, James Rosenquist, and Roy Lichtenstein, and though he is not perhaps as highly regarded in the art world, he has a wider popular following than any of them.
- Two sides of life
"I started as a commercial artist, and I want to finish as a business artist," the Pop artist Andy Warhol wrote in 1975. "Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art."
- Alternative universe
In the 1930s and '40s, Boston painters developed a moody, mythic realism. They mixed social satire with depictions of street scenes, Biblical scenes, and mystical symbolic narratives, all of it darkened by the shadow of the Great Depression and World War II.
- Re-structuring
Three large oil paintings overwhelm the lobby at the Portland Museum of Art, introducing the show "Division and Discovery: Recent Works by Frederick Lynch," a beautiful and meditative collection found on the fourth floor of the museum.
- An expanding world
Housed in two galleries at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, “Methods for Modernism: Form and Color in American Art, 1900 to 1925” presents a healthy survey of works by artists featured in the two most definitive venues for introducing European modernism to America.
- Homer's home
A hundred years after his death, Winslow Homer is still making waves.
- Cubism and collage
Maqbool Fida Husain has long been known as one of the grand old men of Indian art.
- States of the art
In New England, where you can't swing a sack of cranberries without hitting a venerable cultural institution, anyone with access to a car (or even a subway pass) can scope out these topnotch art museums.
- Slideshow: Sigg Collection at Peabody Essex Museum
The Sigg collection of contemporary Chinese artwork on display at the Peabody Essex Museum
- Deep layers
Throughout his long career Mark Wethli's work has been studied, careful, and formally rigorous.
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Topics:
This Just In
, Painting, Visual Arts, Andy Warhol, More
, Painting, Visual Arts, Andy Warhol, Andy Warhol, Brown University, Pablo Picasso, Leonardo Da Vinci, U.S. Department of Transportation, Boys & Girls Clubs of America, Paul Cezanne, Less
