Founded in 2001, the American Mural Project (AMP) is a nonprofit organization focused on honoring work by giving dignity to the American worker and initiative to kids. At its center is the creation of the largest indoor collaborative artwork in the world—a three-dimensional mural 120 feet long and five stories high. Artist Ellen Griesedieck first conceived of the mural in 1999, when she felt inspi
red by the scale of Boeing’s 747 fabrication plant, which she had visited in preparation for her latest in a series of commissioned paintings of working Americans. While creating the study of the mural, she began to see the project as an opportunity to inspire and challenge others, especially children—not only by depicting this work in the mural, but by involving them in the mural’s creation. A tribute to American workers, the mural is a visual history of the country over the past century through its workers—from heart surgeons to steel workers, athletes to farmers, assembly workers to the fabricators of a 747. Through partnerships with schools, other nonprofits, and professionals in a wide spectrum of fields—including NASA, Boeing, Habitat for Humanity, and HealthCorps—AMP has engaged more than 15,000 students and adults across the country in the creation of the mural through diverse art projects. Beyond the mural exhibit, education programs are the primary focus and include on- and off-site programs for schools, professional development workshops for art teachers, after-school enrichment sessions, summer programs, as well as internships and an apprentice-style Worker-in-Training (WIT) program for high school and college students. AMP’s campus in Winsted, Connecticut, includes three acres, two historic mill buildings, and a small house, which are home to the mural and serve as education programming and administrative space for the arts center. Renovations to the mural building, which included raising the roof by nearly thirty feet, finished in the fall of 2018, and the lengthy process of assembling and installing the mural is nearly complete. AMP opened with regular hours in June 2022.
