Outdoor sculpture featured in MHA show

By Felicia Menard
HippoPress.com

The Manchester Historic Association is hosting "Preserving Memory: America's Monumental Legacy," an exhibit by Save Outdoor Sculpture, a group that seeks to protect outside art old and new, at their Amherst Street building.

Major Gen. John Stark's painted plaster bust from 1947-nicked, illustrating the group's point-greets visitors.

This is a quiet show. There are no interactive hook-ups. There are no bright spotlights or flashing diodes. The 20 panels that make up the exhibit generate their own interest- lower portions of the panels are designed to be kid-friendly-and the whole show is surprisingly informative.
For example, there's the story of the Stark equestrian statue in Stark Park.

Photographs of plaster models (maquettes) submitted by Lawrence Tenney Stevens and Richard H. Recchia in 1947 are displayed prominently in the exhibit. Recchia's design was selected and cast into bronze. His plaster model is the simpler of the choices. Stark is depicted with his feet back in the stirrups, his horse pulling back at the bit. All of the horse's hooves are on the ground. The ground swells upward at the base of the statue.

Lawrence Tenney Stevens submitted a more complex maquette for consideration. His horse has three hooves touching the ground and one hoof mid-air. The horse is advancing and Stark's feet are forward in the stirrups to suggest movement. Stark is riding with his saber raised high in the air. At the exhibit, the public is invited to vote for the Stark design they prefer. A panel in the exhibit states there is no basis to suggest that the position of the horse's hooves indicates how the rider died.

Also discussed in the exhibit are more modern works. Contemporary sculptor Seward Johnson created "Double Check," a life-size bronze statue of a businessman seated outside the World Trade Center. The statue prepares for a meeting with his briefcase open at his side. His stapler, calculator, tape recorder, and pencils are visible. Sometimes passersby would drop a sandwich in the briefcase. After Sept. 11, the artist cast an FBI hard hat, flowers, candles and notes. The piece is renamed "Double Check: A Makeshift Memorial."

Fritz Keonig's "Sphere for Plaza Fountain" was damaged by the terrorist attacks in 1993 and 2001 on the World Trade Center. It sits broken and damaged in Battery Park as a memorial to those who died.

Save Outdoor Sculpture is an organization of volunteers who inventory historic and contemporary outdoor sculpture to survey their condition, choose conservators and generate fundraising.

Preserving Memory, America's Monumental Legacy is at the Manchester Historic Association, 129 Amherst St. through mid-June. Hours are Tuesday through Saturday 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Free and open to the public.

Felicia Menard can be reached at hippo@hippopress.com