Statues
| Michigan State University campus | |
| The Spartan ("Sparty") | |
| Use | Statue |
| Style | Modernist Futurist Cubist |
| Erected | 1945 (terra cotta) 2005 (bronze) |
| Location | Bronze 42°43′52″N 84°29′15″W / 42.7311°N 84.4874°W / 42.7311; -84.4874 Terra Cotta 42°43′41″N 84°29′10″W / 42.7281°N 84.4861°W / 42.7281; -84.4861 |
| Namesake | Spartan mascot |
| Architect | Leonard Jungwirth (sculptor) |
| Height | 9'7" |
| Website | Sparty Project |
When John Hannah became president of Michigan State College in 1941, he commissioned assistant professor of art Leonard D. Jungwirth to design a statue of an athletic Spartan warrior. Jungwirth sculpted a statue known simply as The Spartan, which soon gained the nickname of "Sparty". Though Jungwirth originally designed The Spartan as a bronze statue, it had to be cast in terra cotta due to World War II rationing of bronze. The terra cotta statue stood on the banks of the Red Cedar River, until 2005, when the university replaced it with a bronze replica. The original Spartan was moved into the stadium, where it remains on display to this day.
Read more about this topic: Sparty
Famous quotes containing the word statues:
“And are not men than they more blind,
Who having eyes yet never find
The bliss in which they move:
Like statues dead
They up and down are carried,
Yet neither see nor love.”
—Thomas Traherne (1636–1674)
“America loves the representation of its heroes to be not just larger than life, but stupendously, awesomely bigger than anything else. If blue whales built statues to each other they’d be smaller then these.”
—Simon Hoggart (b. 1946)
“But have you wine and music still,
And statues and a bright-eyed love,
And foolish thoughts of good and ill,
And prayers to them who sit above?”
—James Elroy Flecker (1884–1919)