Taking an inside look at the murals at the Fresno State’s Science 2 building

At the side of Science 2 building, there is a display of artistic and educational murals.

“So the mural behind me is depicting an ocean scene of the representation of what would be in the vicinity around us if we were here 65 to 70 million years ago,” said Robert Dundas, Earth & Science Professor.

Right next to the ocean mural, there is another mural on three levels of the stairwell. It shows the geological timeline depicting various time periods on Earth.

“So we thought it would be neat if we have a mural that depicts what the life looked like back at the time to go along with the skeleton that the university had already had on display for decades,” said Dundas.

In Fall 2004, before much of the outdoor exhibit planning got off the ground, it was decided that murals would be easy to move forward with, while other aspects of the outdoor exhibits were being discussed.  The dean’s office of the College of Science and Mathematics, along with the Department of Earth & Environmental Sciences, and the office of Facilities and Management came together with a plan. 

The university hired artist Laura Cunningham to design and paint the murals.  She was given broad discretion in what to depict, aside from the university suggesting a late Cretaceous marine scene (for the wall mural), to go along with the plesiosaur cast skeleton on display in the planetarium museum, next door to Science 2, and a geologic timeline mural for the northwest stairwell of the building. Cunningham then painted those murals in 2005.

“There’s a lot of organisms on there that are extinct that hopefully will capture the interest of individuals and want to learn a little more about the history of life in the geologic past on earth,” said Robert Dundas.