Although he is a man of great political smarts, U.S. Sen. Fred Thompson is nobody’s art critic. So when the Republican senator advised then-Vanderbilt Chancellor Joe B. Wyatt about acquiring sculptures from a relatively obscure—and right-leaning—arts foundation, university officials could have politely nodded their heads and filed his idea at the bottom of their “to do” list.
Instead, they made a permanent arrangement with the New York-based Newington-Cropsey Foundation (NCF), angering the university’s art community and provoking questions about why the school made critical aesthetic decisions without input from its fine arts faculty.
“What I find most appalling is that, to the best of my understanding, the faculty on campus best qualified to serve as a jury for a sculpture program were not consulted,” says Cecilia Tichi, a professor of American literature and well-known author. “This program is nowhere near the avant-garde of our own age, and because it takes so many sites on campus it almost precludes other possibilities, other gifts, and other exhibitions.”
Not long after his conversation with Thompson, Wyatt and his wife flew up to New York to look at NCF’s exhibited works. Apparently, they liked what they saw. In the fall of 1997, the university entered into what they called a “creative partnership” with the foundation.
Under the partnership, NCF would place bronze sculptures throughout Vanderbilt’s well-landscaped campus. The school would receive the sculptures at no charge, and in return, the foundation would have the rare chance to have a permanent exhibition space for many of its art students. No Vanderbilt students are among the sculptors.
Confidently titled the “Garden of Great Ideas,” the program features bronze statues that largely illustrate traditional, civic themes (the likes of which probably stoked the interest of Thompson). For example, at a dedication for his “Bill of Rights Eagle,” sculptor Greg Wyatt (no relation to the former chancellor) said that it expressed “respect for the nation’s constitutionally protected freedoms” and the “influences of law on civilization.” Other artists, most of whom are students of Wyatt, talked about how they too set their sights on such epic topics including, “time,” “beauty,” and even “the fall of mankind.”
But while a number of professors were elated that Vanderbilt was ushering in a public art program, others decided, literally and figuratively, to look the other way. They might not have loved the run-of-the-mill sculptures, but they remained quiet as, over a three-year period, Vanderbilt added 12 more pieces with names like “Sands of Time,” “Eternal Hope,” and “Condition of Man.” Three additional sculptures were added this week.
But it was the “Tree of Learning,” yet another sculpture from Greg Wyatt, that seemed to be the last critical straw for many aggrieved professors. The work was installed in May and is a simple—and critics say, boring and unchallenging—replication of a barren tree. It stands outside the library and is almost impossible to miss.
“It’s not that it’s the worst statue, but it’s the biggest,” says Gregg Horowitz, a philosophy professor who specializes in the philosophy of art. “Some people are calling it the ‘Tree of Death.’ The joke was that when it first appeared on campus, people thought that a tree had burnt.”
For Horowitz, the “Tree of Learning” encapsulates all that is wrong with the program. “I think the sculptures are horrendously illustrative, didactic, and moralistic.”
Fine arts professor Bob Mode says that the sculpture program does not achieve “the goal of quality and diversity that we all strive for.” He notes, “there’s just too much of the same—the same material, the same presentation, and the same effort to put all-encompassing generic ideas by outside art students without experience at such levels.”
Judson Newbern, the university’s associate vice chancellor for campus planning who served as the point person for the art program, admits that “Tree of Learning” does, in fact, “look dead.” At Newbern’s request, Wyatt will return to Vanderbilt this week to weld leaves and buds onto his work to give it more vitality.
But Newbern defends the “Garden of Great Ideas” program as a whole, noting that it is not as traditional as its critics contend. He points out that the student artists are a diverse bunch; one comes from Iraq, another from Russia, and many are women. “Each of these students are of today’s generation interpreting various themes,” he says. “I think the work is quite interesting and small enough to use in places here.”
Certainly not all professors are critical of the program. Some, in fact, see it as an affirmation that the medium of sculpture remains a vital one. “A lot of people believe that art has come to a kind of watershed in which traditional symbols and idioms no longer matter, no longer count, and no longer can reach us,” says Lenn Goodman, a professor of philosophy. “But the sculptors who came together in this particular program believe that this idiom can work. The students have original ideas but they are committed to a mastery of a medium that has been in use for many centuries.”
In fact, Newbern suggests that the very thing that people have criticized the works for—its rather conventional message and approach—is in fact its most salient attribute. “The artists are talking about universal human ideas, universal human aspirations, and they’re using an idiom that is very accessible,” he says. “It’s something that someone can walk across the campus and say ‘I understand what they are saying.’ ”
But even those professors who are restrained in their critique of the sculptures suggest that the way in which they came to Vanderbilt should be reviewed and improved. After all, when it came time to bring the works to Vanderbilt, most professors were out of the loop. “We need to have an acquisitions policy,” says Marilyn Murphy, a professor of art and a well-known artist in her own right. “We have a lot of very bright people on campus, and in any number of departments we have people who are knowledgeable about art.”
Newbern says that a few professors were consulted about the program but he admits that the university streamlined its selection process. “The chancellor’s view was that if this became a committee effort, it would have hit a snag and we would have missed a chance to get some early works of potentially promising students.”
A committee of university professors might have objected to the NCF’s rather traditional outlook. The foundation was established to help preserve and promote the art and paintings of Jasper F. Cropsey, a Hudson River School painter. But another goal of the foundation, as expressed on its Web site, is to “advance and promote the values inherent in the 19th century...including the belief that God created nature.” The foundation also promotes a “strong national pride in America.”
Like many left-leaning college professors, some Vanderbilt faculty members are suspicious of any artistic enterprise that attaches itself to such civic themes, even if it’s under the umbrella of promoting a 19th-century artist. “That kind of rhetoric always makes me very suspicious,” Horowitz says. “People sometimes use aesthetic values to cloak political and moral agendas.”
Newbern says that the university is open to more contemporary art installations and in the future will examine how “we go about acquiring recognized art.”
That would almost certainly please Tichi, who would prefer works that perhaps a conservative U.S. senator might not necessarily favor.
“Campuses are places, by definition, where intellect should be expanded, often in ways that are not easy to handle,” she says. “This does not mean that we have to take sculptures that are demoralizing or shocking or send people into spasms. But by definition a university should stretch people’s minds. A campus is not a Holiday Inn.”
