[Leica] IMGs: A Sculpture Through the Years

[george.imagist at icloud.com (George Lottermoser)]

> On May 13, 2016, at 9:38 PM, Alan Magayne-Roshak <amr3 at uwmalumni.com> 
> wrote:
> 
> 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.

fascinating photographic documentation
and narrative.

Milwaukee, as well as the UW-M, and the MAM,
are lucky to have you doing your photography
AND keeping great file keeping.

Regards,
George Lottermoser 

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