Alma Mater (Illinois Sculpture) - History

History

Lorado Taft wrote in correspondence that he began sculpting on the theme of "Labor and Learning" while home from Paris in 1883, after having graduated in 1879. The 1883 piece was a relief with just two figures and was not preserved. He began to seek funding for the project in 1916, a year after Daniel Chester French's Alma Mater was unveiled at Columbia University. Taft was familiar with French's reserved, seated Alma Mater treatment and desired to create a more generous and "cordial" figure suitable for a Midwest mother." He began to correspond that year about the work, writing of it on a grand scale and in terms of the figures in position, pose and dress. The central matriarch would stand "at least twelve feet high" and risen from her throne, advancing a step with outstretched arms, "a gesture of generously greeting her children." On the theme of the motto, he would pose two more figures on the same scale yet subordinate. He based Learning on Lemnia Athena as an heraldic gesture, clasping hands with a sturdy figure of Labor over the back of the chair. The subordination of figures was accomplished by sculpting them "with less accent" so as to make them appear "out of focus." According to financier Roland R. Conklin, an alumnus of the class of 1880, an initial completion date of October, 1918 was pushed back due to Taft's other commissions. Having secured the necessary patronage, Taft and Conklin announced the gift on November 27, 1916. The plaster cast was presented at the annual convocation of the Alumni Association at 3:00 PM on June 13, 1922. So although the plaque beneath has stated the statue was conceived in 1922, it was nearly half a century in the making.

The Alma Mater was cast in 1929 by the American Art Bronze Foundry with materials paid for by donations by the Alumni Fund and the classes of 1923-1929, and with time donated by the sculptor himself. Taft insisted that his aim was not personal glory: he wished that his signature appear on the bronze and nowhere else, and even spoke decidedly of forgoing the dedication ceremony. But attend he did, and at the statue's dedication on June 11, 1929, the university bestowed on Taft an honorary Doctor of Laws degree.

For 33 years, the statue's provisional location was on the south campus behind Foellinger Auditorium, but the Alumni Association moved Alma Mater to Altgeld Hall on August 22, 1962 despite student dissent. The Daily Illini protested the new location as in the "worst possible taste; it makes the Alma Mater a debased, commercial ‘advertisement’ for the University.” Taft, whose father was the first geology professor at the University, lived for many years in Champaign at 601 E. John Street, less than two blocks from the site at Altgeld.