Symposium in American Art

Last weekend I had the pleasure of participating in the 2013 Oswaldo Rodriguez Roque Memorial Symposium in American Art sponsored by the Yale University Art Gallery.  Entitled Tell as a Whole, the symposium examined collaborations between artists and architects from the late nineteenth century to the present.

Nebraska State Capitol

The American muralist Edwin Howland Blashfield used the phrase “tell as a whole” in 1898 to refer to the combination of all elements of art and architecture into a decorative interior of seamless unity.  The theme of the symposium was inspired by the murals painted by Blashfield in 1893 and 1894 for the Fifth Avenue mansion of Collis and Arabella Huntington and now owned by the Yale University Art Gallery.  These recently conserved works are on view in the museum’s American art galleries.

One of the bison reliefs designed by
Lee Lawrie  for the sides
of the parapets at the main entrance to the Capitol

The symposium began with a keynote address by architectural historian extraordinaire Richard Guy Wilson of the University of Virginia, who spoke about the American Renaissance as reflected in the interiors of Trinity Church and the Boston Public Library.  Other speakers examined Blashfield’s work at the Library of Congress, Diego Rivera’s ill-fated mural for Rockefeller Center, and Mark Rothko’s commission for the Four Seasons restaurant in the Seagram’s Building.  Michele Oka Doner, an artist known for her public art installations, ended the symposium with a discussion of A Walk on the Beach, her remarkable installation at the Miami International Airport.

My topic was the Nebraska State Capitol in Lincoln, built in four stages between 1922 and 1932.  Hildreth Meière designed much of the decoration for that building’s interiors, but she was not the primary subject of my presentation.  Rather, my objective was to “tell as a whole,” to explain how the team of four assembled by architect Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue, his so-called quadrivirate (Goodhue, Meière, sculptor Lee Lawrie, and architectural iconographer Hartley Burr Alexander), worked together to produce a building with a unified and cohesive theme. 

The top of the Capitol’s tower with the Thunderbird mosaic 

on the drum and The Sower mounted on the dome.

The architect for the building was chosen by a competition.  Most of the ten firms invited to participate submitted designs inspired by the U. S. Capitol—classically inspired buildings dominated by a dome.  But Goodhue won with a design that deviated from tradition, emphasizing clean, simple geometric forms and replacing the dome with a soaring 400-foot tower.  He likened the horizontal base of his design to the flat, horizontal topography of the Nebraska plains and he envisioned the tower as a landmark visible for miles (if you’ve ever been to Lincoln, you know that it indeed is).

Dr. Hartley Burr Alexander, the head of the Philosophy Department at the University of Nebraska, designed the decorative program for the building, which sprang directly from Goodhue’s design—the horizontal base and vertical tower.  He provided a philosophical interpretation of these design elements.  Lawrie’s sculpture on the building’s exterior progresses from the historical and concrete on the base to the symbolic and abstract at the tower.  This same progression is apparent, although in a richer and more complex manner, in Meière’s designs for the interiors.   

Lincoln may not be at the top of everyone’s “must see” list, but those who make the pilgrimage are not likely to be disappointed.

Karen Wagner

Thanks to Pat Kane of the Yale University Art Gallery for inviting me to speak.  And another big thank you to Karen Wagner, the archivist at the Nebraska State Capitol, for guiding me through the Capitol archives and providing digital files of key documents and images of original drawings and sketches.

Details from the bronze doors designed by Lee Lawrie

Hildreth Meière’s design of the cosmic sun or central star (left), the source of energy and a symbol of creation, for the marble mosaic floor of the Nebraska State Capitol vestibule. 

 A detail from Vital Energy designed by Hildreth Meière for the marble mosaic floor of the foyer of the Capitol (right).