Boston Mayor Marty Walsh is featured among some of the world’s noted politicians and stars of stage, screen and sport in a permanent exhibition at historic Shannon Airport that was unveiled last month.

The exhibit celebrates the 70th anniversary of the first commercial transatlantic flight into a land based Irish airport.

Some 64 images drawn from the 1950s to the current day have been assembled from archives and placed in a permanent exhibition on the walls of the airport’s transit lounge.

The exhibit, which was launched on Dec. 1 by Shannon Group Chairman Rose Hynes, reflects the international standing of Shannon as a global aviation crossroads as it includes some of the world’s best known personalities of politics, stage, screen and sport.

Hynes, in her address to over 250 attendees at the launch in the airport transit lounge, recalled the words of Mayor Walsh on his arrival to Shannon in September 2014.

“There are probably only a very small percentage of airports outside the US that have had every American president since John F Kennedy through its doors,” said Hynes. “Boston Mayor Marty Walsh on arrival here at Shannon last year summed it up when he said ‘Shannon is a place where the relationship between Ireland and American has taken flight.....Today we stand at the same transatlantic gateway that brought my parents to America and brought American presidents to Ireland.’ That says a lot about this airport.

Famous faces and events captured in the exhibition include every US president from JFK to Barack Obama and other global political and religious leaders such as Nelson Mandela, President Mikhail Gorbachev, Chinese President Xi Jinping, Cuban President Fidel Castro, Pope John Paul II and the Dali Lama.

The photo array includes movie stars such as Gene Kelly, Bing Crosby, Marilyn Monroe, Bob Hope, Marlon Brando, Richard Burton, Richard Harris and Peter O’Toole. It also reaches into sport, with Mohammed Ali’s visit here also included, as is Irish boxer Andy Lee’s homecoming last year following his world title victory in Las Vegas.

Shannon Group CEO Neil Pakey said, “This exhibition just shows how much of a crossroads Shannon was and still is. It’s part of the fabric of the region and of the nation and has been, and continues to be, the start and finish of so many great visits and so many great events.”