'Garden of Great Ideas'
brings original sculptures to campus
by Ellie Shick
A new partnership between the Newington-Cropsey Foundation and Vanderbilt
University will enhance campus beauty and artistry, announced Chancellor
Joe B. Wyatt at the May 1 dedication of the Bill of Rights Eagle sculpture
near Old Central.
During the next three to five years, the NCF will donate between 15 and
20 original bronze sculptures for placement throughout campus. The collection
will be known as the "Garden of Great Ideas."
"The garden's paramount aim is to celebrate the process of education
and to pay tribute to the great ideas of civilization," said Chancellor
Wyatt. "This generous gift will memorialize the marriage of scholarship
and artistry."
The NCF is a non-profit organization devoted to the study and exhibit of
original paintings by Jasper F. Cropsey and the collection of 19th century
American Hudson River School artists located in Hastings-on-Hudson, New
York. In conjunction with the new partnership, the NCF donated the Bill
of Rights Eagle sculpture created by Greg Wyatt, director of the NCF Academy
of Art.
The garden's final piece, to be located on the east lawn in front of the
Jean and Alexander Heard Library, will be created by Greg Wyatt and titled,
"Tree of Knowledge." The additional works will be completed by
apprentices of the NCF Academy of Art, working in concert with Vanderbilt
students and faculty.
"It is the goal to create not only a beautiful public garden for meditation
and tribute to the human mind, but also to cultivate the young minds of
our future generations by a process of exploration, experimentation and
investigation," Greg Wyatt said. "By dipping into the fountain
of knowledge and testing the depths, these young acolytes will realize that
there is much to learn, that there are infinite ways of learning and that
there will always be infinite opportunities for them to contribute their
own treasures to the world's storehouse of knowledge."
Greg Wyatt is also the sculptor-in-residence at New York's Cathedral Church
of St. John the Divine, where he created the 40-foot-high Peace Fountain,
the first outdoor children's sculpture garden. His work can be found in
many private and public collections. Among his best-known public sculpture
commissions are the heroic scale bronze Olympic Woman for the global corporate
headquarters of Avon Inc., the 10-foot-high Eagle at the Wall Street area
headquarters of the American Bureau of Shipping, and the Fantasy Fountain
in Gramercy Park, all in New York City; the James Cash Penney Standing Portrait
monument for the headquarters building of J.C. Penney Company in Plano,
Texas; and the DNA-inspired Life Forces at American Cyanamid in Pearl River,
New York.
In 1990 and 1994, Greg Wyatt was featured on CBS's "Sunday Morning,"
with Charles Kuralt. He is the recipient of the U.S. Congress Citation Award
and the City of New York, Manhattan Borough President Proclamation. He is
presently represented at the Kennedy Galleries, New York City, and is currently
exhibiting large public works at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass.
"It is most fitting that the catalyst triggering Vanderbilt's collection
of outdoor artwork comes from so near the New York source of the University's
original philanthropic support," said Chancellor Wyatt, referring to
New Yorker Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt who gave the bequest to found
Vanderbilt University.
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This document created May 22, 1997
HTML Translation by Billy Kingsley