A Campus Taking Shape

Public art on a university campus lends a bit of character and liveliness to the commute between classes. Free from the bounds of galleries or museums and accessible to all who pass, it becomes a gathering place, a spot for reflection, a focal point. Over the past decade, donors have dramatically expanded public art offerings at UVM, helping to beautify and diversify the landscape with gifts of sculpture. UVM’s public art collection dates back to at least 1883, when Burlington philanthropist John Purple Howard donated the 1,800-pound Marquis de Lafayette statue, with its oft-purloined cane. In this millennium, artists featured on UVM grounds have brought forth more conceptual, aesthetically divergent forms. Some integrate with the landscape, like Unlocked by Christopher Curtis ’74, a gift from UVM friends Stephen and Petra Levin. The egg-shaped, puzzle-themed piece made of granite sourced in Groton, Vermont, looks somewhat like a glacial erratic naturally deposited among the green’s more traditional pieces. Lamentations, given by sculptor Judith Brown and the Stettenheim Foundation, is a dramatic grouping of five female figures created from welded scrap metal. The shadowy forms clad in long, flowing robes appear to be moving through a grove of honey locust trees and are an ethereal presence on central campus.

Other installations stand more assertively in juxtaposition to their surroundings and call for further contemplation. Sculptor Richard Erdman ’75, HON’16 and his wife Madeleine Austin have donated five of Erdman’s abstract works to UVM, comprising something of a collection within a collection. Areté Blu is a vibrant Brazilian blue granite sculpture situated between Morrill Hall and the Davis Center. “Its emotive and energetic stance beckons visitors to live actively, live dangerously, live passionately—and in its contiguous form, live in continuity,” said Erdman. The location of a piece can also create a certain academic resonance. This is the case with Gordon Gund’s bronze whale flukes that rise from a perennial garden in front of the Aiken Building, home of the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources. Flukes was a gift from Gordon and Llura Gund, parents of UVM graduates Grant ’91 and Zack ’93. The piece is a nod to the family’s passion for building a more sustainable future for the planet, which was rendered far more concretely in their philanthropic contributions that helped establish UVM’s Gund Institute for Environment in 2017. The work is rooted in Gordon Gund’s experience helping to free pilot whales beached outside his home on Nantucket. The sculptor, who has been blind since losing his sight to retinitis pigmentosa in 1971, spent hours with others trying to move the animals back into open waters. Gund held the tail of one of the whales in his hands, an experience he says he will never forget. He began work on Flukes shortly thereafter. The public art now on display at UVM, in its many shapes, sizes, forms, and materials, has quickly become part of the community’s identity. The works activate the imagination, invite an interaction between the artist and the individual, and express or even challenge our shared values.