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It’s Art…for Public Sake!
Leonard Jungwirth sculpts Father Gabriel Richard, circa 1940
ArtPrize
ArtPrize 2011 begins tomorrow in Grand Rapids. From September 21 until October 9th, the city will exhibit an extravaganza of art for people to enjoy, free of charge. The public can register that enjoyment by voting for the best work. The ten top favorites of this open competition will receive cash awards, the first being quite sizeable, $250,000. This is the third exhibition, sponsored by this private organization that melds art, competition, and Grand Rapids tourism. It also allows artists to expand their clientele and realize some income from their artistic vision.
Public art has been alive in Michigan since the 19th century. The sculptor Leonard D. Jungwirth (1903-1963), profited from being an artist during the Franklin Delano Roosevelt presidency. The Detroit-native began his career in the carving shop founded by his father, Joachim. (Joachim is one of the two people credited with carving the giant Garland Stove for the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago.) Leonard graduated from the University of Detroit in 1927 and studied ecclesiastical and civic monumental art at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. Returning to Detroit (c. 1933), he became one of the many sculptors supported by the WPA Federal Arts Project.
After finishing his Master’s Degree at Wayne State University (1940), Leonard Jungwirth migrated to East Lansing and became part of the Art Faculty at Michigan State College of Agriculture and Applied Science (now Michigan State University). In 1945 his sculpture, The Spartan, was dedicated and became the symbol of MSU spirit. Today’s blog photograph captures Jungwirth as he works on his WPA statue of Father Gabriel Richard. I realize that I am showing my Detroit-native bias by considering this Sulpician priest, but the nuns who educated me would require it . . . Father Richard trumps Sparty.
Gabriel Richard was born in France in 1767. Father Richard was well-educated, became a priest, and was dispatched to the Americas (c. 1792) because he was vulnerable to French Revolutionary forces. He settled in Baltimore and was a professor of mathematics for St. Mary’s College, Maryland. Bishop John Carroll assigned missionary work to Father Richard, sending him first to Illinois, then to Detroit. Father Richard became the pastor of St. Anne’s Church (1802), and co-founded, with Reverend John Monteith, the Catholepistemiad, or university, of Michigania (1817). (The Catholepistemiad is the forerunner of what is now the University of Michigan.) Gabriel Richard also served as Michigan’s third delegate to the United States House of Representatives (1823-1825) and was successful in obtaining support for funding a road between Detroit and Chicago (the modern U.S. 12).
The final product created by Jungwirth is granite, 15-feet, and captures the contemporary descriptions of Father Richard: tall, angular, and boney. It also captures the priest’s spirit, venerable and indefatigable, a man who faithfully ministered to the Detroit community until his death during a cholera epidemic in 1832. The statue, which was dedicated on October 16, 1940, can be found in the front of Gabriel Richard Park, which is located near the Belle Isle Bridge. It is just one of many public art works sponsored by the City of Detroit using federal funds. The back of the photograph lists the price paid by the Detroit Planning Commission: $1975.00.
Links:
Read more about the Federal Arts Program in a 2009 article written by my colleague, Bob Garrett. (http://1.usa.gov/pqcNCX)
ArtPrize Url: http://www.artprize.org/
Photograph of Father Richard in Park setting (with Google map):
http://www.waymarking.com/gallery/image.aspx?f=1&guid=7c35fe2f-7abe-4326-8fc9-98c3609d7836
The statue of Father Gabriel Richard has the same look as the MSU Sparty. I recognized it at once. Sparty, however, the original that is was ceramic and poured into molds. Thanks for presenting another Jungwirth statue.