Every visitor passes beneath this mural on the way to the museum exit.
Most never look up.
At first glance it appears to be a single, enormous photograph of the Wright brothers’ first flight. Step a little closer and the image begins to dissolve into thousands of individual ceramic tiles, each carrying one of twenty symbolic images connected to the Wright brothers and the birth of aviation.
The photographs below reveal the story behind the mural. They explain how it was designed, the symbolic images that make up its more than 163,000 ceramic tiles, and the history behind one of the museum’s most overlooked works of art.
Historical information about the mural is summarized from the National Museum of the United States Air Force’s interpretive displays and publicly available sources. The photographs of the interpretive panels above are included to encourage visitors to explore the mural’s story in greater detail.