In 1931, Alvin Johnson, president of the New School, commissioned Camilo Egas to paint a mural to hang in the wall outside the dance studio on the lower level of 66 West Twelfth Street, the school’s new modern building designed by Joseph Urban. Egas created "Ecuadorian Festival," a composition depicting a generic celebration that integrates dancers in native costumes from various regions of the country, privileging national unity over regional specificity. To a North American audience the scene would have appeared breathtakingly exotic. "Ecuadorian Festival" was favorably reviewed in the American Magazine of Art, Art News, and the New York Times, among others. After Egas died in 1962, "Ecuadorian Festival" languished for half a century in its original basement location. Around 2000, a wall was erected in front of the mural, evidently to protect it from damage.

The restoration of "Ecuadorian Festival" was completed in 2011 and the work was included in the exhibition, "(re)collection," at Sheila C. Johnson Design Center at the New School, June 16-September 7, 2011. This exhibition was curated by Silvia Rocciolo and Eric Stark, co-curators of the New School Art Collection, along with John Wanzel, and explored the relationship between art collections and their institutions. At the close of the exhibition, "Ecuadorian Festival" was installed prominently in the lobby of the 66 West Twelfth Street building.

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Based in part on wall text by Michele Greet, "re(collection)" exhibition. curated by Silvia Rocciolo, Eric Stark, and John Wanzel, Sheila C. Johnson Design Center, the New School (June 16–September 7, 2011).

Greet, Michele. Beyond National Identity: Pictorial Indigenism as a modernist strategy in Andean art, 1920-1960. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009.

Pérez, Trinidad. “Exoticism, Alterity and the Ecuadorean Elite: The Work of Camilo Egas.” In Images of Power: Iconography, Culture and the State in Latin America, edited by Jens Andermann, William Rowe. New York, Oxford: Berghahn Books: 2005.