Mural by Geuer in the 1.8m dome in Victoria

    For 35 years, a mural adorned the ground floor of the 1.8m Plaskett telescope
  building in Victoria, from 1965 to 2000. It was painted in the summer of 1965 by Juan GEUER, 
  and had no title. Its theme was "Progress from Chaos to Civilization". 
  It is now located at the National Archives in Ottawa. 




   The short description (below) was provided by Dr. Alan Batten in 1997 Nov.

 "Juan Geuer was a draughtsman on the staff of the old Dominion Observatory
  in Ottawa. When the rotunda under the dome of that building was renovated,
  either in the late fifties or early sixties, Beals let Geuer loose painting
  the ceiling panels there. He produced a rather good set of signs of the
  zodiac." 

 "The space that is now an exhibit room in [the 1.8-meter Plaskett] dome [in
  Victoria] used to be the Observatory's workshop. [In] 1959, it was a rather
  untidily kept storeroom and the decision was made to convert it to its
  present purpose. This created a large blank wall that cried out for some 
  form of decoration. [It was either] Petrie's idea or Beal's to have Geuer
  come out here and to create a mural, but that was what was arranged." 

 "[Geuer] chose the constellations in which a lot of DAO work had been done,
  and which were all connected with the Andromeda-Perseus story. He also
  worked in a theme of progress from chaos to civilization."  

 "Chaos was represented by the vaguely-shaped sea monster, Cetus, in the
  lower right of the mural, civilization by a telescope and Greek letters in
  the upper left. The figures became gradually more formed as he progressed
  along this diagonal line." 
 "The most obvious Greek letter was a capital omega. Geuer was reading
  Teilhard de Chardin at the time, and this was a clear allusion to the
  omega point of Le Phenomène Humain." 

 "The first thing that the artist did was to trace out accurately the
  relative positions of the brighter stars in the relevant constellations --
  so he accepted that amount of constraint on his imagination: the
  constellations are all in the right relationship." 

 "Opinions differed on the degree of his success, but I rather liked
  the result and think that it is a serious work of art. I think Pegasus
  is a particularly fine winged horse!"