Sculpture
The name "Amanda" is derived from a song, or sea shanty, titled "Amanda fra Haugesund". Supposedly the song in turn refers to a real woman from the 1920s – a lone mother who made a living from selling liquor to sailors during the prohibition period.
The figurine that is awarded to prize winners originated from a competition held by the local newspaper Haugesunds Avis in 1985, to create a sculpture of the legendary Amanda. The competition was won by Kristian Kvakland from Nesodden in Akershus. The full-size sculpture now stands outside the newspaper's office, but a miniature version was adopted as a trophy for the Amanda Award. The figurine is 30 cm (11.81 in) tall, with a skirt measuring 14 cm (5.51 in) in diameter. While the current sculpture is hollow and weighs 2.5 kg (5.51 lbs), for the first few years it was made of solid metal. Weighing in at 4.5 kg (9.92 lbs) it was difficult to hoist for many winners.
It was one of these prizes that, in the year 1986, was won by director Anja Breien, who decided to sell it through a newspaper advert, as a protest against that year's budget cuts for Norwegian film. The Swedish Film Institute, which had experienced similar cuts and sympathized, bought the sculpture. In 2005, as Breien was presented with an honorary award, she was also given back the original sculpture by former Minister of Culture and director of the Swedish Film Institute, Åse Kleveland.
Read more about this topic: Amanda Award
Famous quotes containing the word sculpture:
“There are men whose manners have the same essential splendor as the simple and awful sculpture on the friezes of the Parthenon, and the remains of the earliest Greek art.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)