In a post entitled "Functional Splendor" Sarah Osborne Bender blogs about a visit to see August Vincent Tack's (1870 – 1949) last abstract painting – a mural. She writes: "In 1944, as a commissioned project facilitated by Duncan Phillips, Tack created a beautiful mural, called Time and Timelessness (Spirit of Creation), to be used as a fire curtain in [George Washington University’s] new auditorium."  Tack saw his subject to be the pursuit of knowledge embodied in the "astronomical" and the "microscopic."  As a fire curtain, the painting and the knowledge it depicts also form a protective barrier, shielding the audience from potential oblivion.