Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2016/05/13
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]A couple of weeks ago, I went to a lecture at the Milwaukee Art Museum all about "The Last of the Spartans", a sculpture by Gaetano Trentanove. This work was done in Italy about 1891, exhibited at the World's Columbian Exhibition in Chicago in 1893, then bought by a Milwaukee businessman and installed in the Layton Art Gallery here. In 1957 the Milwaukee County War Memorial building designed by Eero Sarinen and incorporating the Milwaukee Art Center had opened, and the paintings in the Layton collection were brought there. But the sculptures in the Layton Gallery were just left to be demolished with the then-unfashionable Victorian building. A woman present at the lecture told us how she contacted a friend who was a mover and got him and his crew to move the statue and pedestal out of the threatened structure in the middle of the night and transport it to the Milwaukee County Courthouse. I realized that I had a series of pictures of it, and went through my collection. The statue sat at the courthouse, in an alcove near an entrance, for 20 years: < http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/Alan+Magayne-Roshak/Miscellaneous/Spartan/Spartan_A_MR_1969.jpg.html > < http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/Alan+Magayne-Roshak/Miscellaneous/Spartan/Spartan_B_MR_1969.jpg.html > By 1973 it had had cigarette butts pushed in its mouth and who knows what else visited upon it: < http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/Alan+Magayne-Roshak/Miscellaneous/Spartan/Spartan_MR_1973.jpg.html > But in 1977 it was moved to what was by now the Milwaukee Art Museum, and had some cleaning done: < http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/Alan+Magayne-Roshak/Miscellaneous/Spartan/Spartan_MR_1978.jpg.html > In 2013 the museum did a temporary (sigh) re-creation of the original Layton Gallery, with the paintings that had been there: < http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/Alan+Magayne-Roshak/Miscellaneous/Spartan/Spartan_MR_2013.jpg.html > That show closed, and last month's lecture was in what is only a smaller facsimile of the Layton Gallery. Because the new location is on an upper floor (and because it is also surmised that the pedestal is not by Trentanove) a simpler and lower base now sits under the work. The man giving the talk is the museum's restoration specialist, and he said that the sculpture and base together came to 8,300 pounds, and would probably go through the floor. I so loved that 2013 presentation. I wish they could have kept that permanently. Those red walls were great. All the pictures can be enlarged. -- Alan Alan Magayne-Roshak, Senior Photographer University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Photo Services (Retired) UPAA Photographer of the Year 1978 UPAA Master of the Profession 2014 amr3 at uwm.edu http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/Alan+Magayne-Roshak/ "All the technique in the world doesn't compensate for an inability to notice. " - Elliott Erwitt