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*The lecture is free. Admission required for Vulcan Park Museum and tower (free for Vulcan Park Museum members, $6.00 adults). As the scholar Karal Ann Marling noted in her 1984 book The Colossus of Road, "Heroic scale calls attention ot the inherently theatrical and dynamic character of the American Dream of a frontier without limits of time or space. Great size comes to stand for America, and size per se becomes synonymous with American superiority." In the late nineteenth century, as the United States assumed the role of a world power, colossal sculptures provided fitting emblems of America's might. Ironically, the earliest and greatest American colossus was a gift from France. Installed in 1886, the 151-foot Statue of Liberty has become one of America's most important symbols. Other mammoth sculptures soon followed. In 1893, the centerpiece of the World's Columbian Exposition was a 65-foot allegorical figure of The Republic. Visitors to the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair were greeted by a gigantic plaster enlargement of Frederic Remington's iconic sculpture Cowboys Shooting Up a Western Town, better known as Comin' Through the Rye. However, the biggest star of the 1904 Fair was Giuseppe Moretti's Vulcan--a 56-foot cast iron marvel that signified the manufacturing and mineralogical might of the Birmingham area. As the world's largest cast-iron sculpture, and one of the earliest colossal statues erected in the United States, Vulcan is an important example of this phenomenon. Dr. Boettcher will present an illustrated lecture discussing Vulcan in the context of monumental sculpture of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. |
Sunday, November 15, 2009 