UNIVERSITY PARK — For those who submitted a photo to the Penn State All-Sports Museum for the Franco Harris photomosaic mural, it’s time to find out if your photo made the cut.
The photomosaic mural was unveiled on Nov. 12 and is now on display at the museum.
According to Lew Lazarow, interim director of the Penn State All-Sports Museum, the mural has been a hit.
“Everyone who was here (on Nov. 12) loved it,” Lazarow said. “I had planned for a 15-minute thing, but people were here for an hour, taking photos in front of it and taking photos of it. They were just sharing stories and talking about what photo they submitted. We had a lot of Franco’s family members, some VIPs. … It was a good group of people who really knew Franco really well.”
It was an emotional day for all involved.
“They were very appreciative of the mosaic,” Lazarow said.
Lazarow said that they wound up accepting 1,980 photos.
“I think we had somewhere in the 2,200-2,300 range of photos that were submitted. The 1,980 fit our submission standards. That’s what went into the actual mosaic. The mosaic itself is composed of somewhere in the vicinity of 6,000 images. Some of the images are in there multiple times to make it look right,” Lazarow said.
Since the inception of the project, Lazarow said that the response has been “tremendous.”
Lazarow believes that it’s fitting that the photomosaic was unveiled a little more than a month before the one-year anniversary of Harris’ passing.
“In Judaism, there’s a tradition of one year after someone’s death, everyone actually gets back together and the headstone is placed and unveiled. It’s this cathartic moment. You’re not feeling the grief in the same way that you were a year before, so everyone feels better about sharing the precious memories of the person that you’ve lost. You do it in a much more positive way,” Lazarow said.
Harris passed away on Dec. 20, 2022. The Pittsburgh Steelers were set to honor him at halftime of their game against the Oakland Raiders on Dec. 24, 2022.
“We’re only about a month away from that first anniversary, but everybody felt positive and everybody felt that love. This was a wonderful person and we’re so glad he was in our lives and we get to share those memories,” Lazarow said.
Lazarow said that the photomosaic mural came together nicely.
“We started talking about this over the summer. We started laying out the plans at the end of July. We started having conversations and deciding what it was we wanted to do. We spent August and September getting ready and launched it to the public at the end of September. We stopped taking submissions by the end of October,” Lazarow said.
“All things considered, it did move very quickly.”
He credited Picture Mosaics for helping move the project along.
“They were fantastic,” Lazarow said.
You can stop by and check out the photomosaic at the All-Sports Museum. It is open from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and from noon to 4 p.m. on Sundays. The mural can be viewed and searched online at digitalmosaic.net/francomosaic/.
