DESCRIPTION
In 1934, the U.S. Treasury Department collaborated with the Board of Education and the Works Progress Administration's (WPA) Arts Project to commission a mural within Pasadena's McKinley School library. Artist Frank Tolles Chamberlain was chosen to design the mural under the theme of education. During the mural's execution, Chamberlin invited several students from McKinley to pose as the foreground subjects of the mural. These students appear participating in educational activities in front of a background depicting the Southern California landscape through images of Eaton Canyon and the Arroyo Seco. Chamberlin incorporated a line of verse from Anna Trumbull Waller's poem, Song of Youth, which compliments the mural's theme and the artist's passion for education: "All heritage of the past is mine, to be moulded by my spirit into forms new and fair."