Art: MUSEUM WITHOUT WALLS

FAIRMOUNT PARK in Philadelphia is a green oasis of wooded hills and bridle paths stretched along the banks of the Schuylkill (pronounced Skookl) River. It has a zoo, the the Philadelphia Museum of Art, mansions from colonial times, some buildings put up for the 1876 Centennial, a duplicate of the Rodin Museum in France and an excellent institute of applied science named for Benjamin Franklin. Covering 4,000 acres, it is one of the world’s biggest municipal parks. With all that, Fairmount’s most appealing distinction is as an outstanding outdoor show of sculpture— a vast art museum without walls.

Roman Gods & Abe Lincoln. Originally, the city fathers had no grand design in mind.One of their first purchases was made in the early 1800s to decorate the city waterworks, and it consisted of wooden figures by William Rush, the famous carver of ships’ figureheads. From Sculptor Randolph Rogers in 1871 came a statue of Lincoln. In 1887 Alexander Milne Calder, grandfather of the mobilist, did an equestrian bronze of Philadelphia’s Civil War hero, General George Meade. Frederic Remington produced a Cowboy; Daniel C. French did an idealized female Justice; Augustus Saint-Gaudens carved a bust of President Garfield. There was a mounted George Washington said to be the largest bronze in the U.S.

As time passed, the park became a mishmash of changing tastes: there were Roman gods, a Joan of Arc, a majestically cloaked Saint-Gaudens Pilgrim, a copy of Rodin’s naked Thinker. Then in 1913 the wealthy Mrs. Ellen Phillips Samuel, daughter of a Philadelphia iron tycoon, left in her will a trust fund to be used to buy “statuary emblematical of the history of America.” Emblem No 1 was a sturdy Icelandic Viking named Thorfinn Karlsefni; after him came a procession of American types—a Ploughman, an Immigrant, a Slave, a Miner. Finally in 1950 the city decided to branch out. Two of the sculptors asked to do works for the park: the late Sir Jacob Epstein and Jacques Lipchitz.

Fate & Teddy Roosevelt. Epstein himself thought his hauntmg Social Consciousness (see cut) “one of my major works.” In the center is the seated figure of “Fate itself” To Fate’s left stands Mother Earth clutching the racked body of a man—”the man child returning to its eternal mother,” Epstein explained. And the right is the compassionate Christ offering succor to crumpled humanity.

Compared to Epstein’s Gothic melancholy Lipchitz’ sculpture, variously called Spirit of Enterprise, Creative Enterprise and Constructive Enterprise, is a mass of rippling bronze muscle. While a great eagle points the way hairy-chested pioneer lunges toward the future The 9,000-lb. statue was cast in 20 pieces, which were welded together in Lipchitz’ Long Island City foundry. He has been working on it intermittently for a decade but it was not until this fall that it was finally put in place. When it was commissioned, says Lipchitz, “someone gave me a quote from President Theodore Roosevelt for inspiration.” Sculptor Lipchitz promptly forgot the quote but when he at last saw it inscribed on the prospective base of his statue in Fairmount Park, he found that it “completely describes my work, and this makes me proud.” The inscription: “Our nation, glorious in youth and strength, looks into the future with fearless and eager eyes, as vigorous as a young man to run a race.”