HARPREET SINGH
US Ambassador to India Kenneth I. Juster has unveiled the recreated Indian style wall murals in the dining hall christened The Blue Room, at his residence Roosevelt House, to a reception attended by the diplomatic core and strategic partners.
A connoisseur of art, an influence from his father who was an architect, Juster, taking over in 2017, found the blue murals in the room had been plastered over. He remembered them from 2005 when he was posted here as Under Secretary of Commerce. His attempts at removing the plaster to uncover them had failed.
He researched and located the artist Karen Lukas in the US who had created these in 1995 along with Indian craftsmen. Funds for the restoration were provided by, the American Chamber of Commerce in India, the US India Business Council and US India Strategic Partnership forum.
He contacted Lukas, an aficionado of Indian folk art herself, who agreed, beginning last year to successfully recreate and restore the original murals.
“What I enjoy about Roosevelt House is that it was designed by a renowned architect, Edward Durell Stone, and that he sought to combine modern American architecture with some of the traditional elements of Indian architecture that he had seen throughout the country,” Juster told The Indian Express.
“That’s why you will see that the grill work on the outside of the building has a very Indian flavor, and some of the interior spaces have a modern American sense to them. Frank Lloyd Wright referred to our chancery and Roosevelt House as among the top buildings of the last 100 years when he saw them.”
When Jacqueline Kennedy, wife of then US President John F. Kennedy, visited New Delhi in 1962, she was so taken by Stone’s work throughout the embassy complex that she chose him to design the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington DC, which looks similar in design and architecture.
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