Alma Mater (Illinois sculpture)
| Alma Mater | |
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| Artist | Lorado Taft |
| Year | 1929, 2012-2014 (Restored) |
| Type | Bronze sculpture |
| Location | Campustown, Urbana, Illinois |
| Owner | University of Illinois |
The Alma Mater is a bronze statue by sculptor Lorado Taft, a beloved symbol of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The statue was removed from its site at the entrance to the university for restoration in 2012 and was returned to its site in the spring of 2014. The 10,000-pound statue depicts a mother-figure wearing academic robes and flanked by two attendant figures representing "Learning" and "Labor", after the University's motto "Learning and Labor." Sited at the corner of Green Street and Wright Street at the heart of campus, and the edge of Campustown, the statue is iconic for the university and a popular backdrop for student graduation photos. It is appreciated for its romantic, heraldic overtones and warmth of pose.
The Alma Mater is a bronze figure of a woman in academic robes. She stands in front of a stylized throne or klismos with her arms outstretched in welcome. The attendant figure "Labor" is a male who stands to her proper right and wears a blacksmith's apron. At his feet lies a sheaf of papers. The proper left figure "Learning" is a female robed a classical gown with a sun bas-relief on front. Learning and Labor extend their hands in a handshake over the throne. The work stands approximately 13-feet tall. The granite base carries three inscriptions:
The long flowerbed stretching from the front of the Alma Mater to the corner of Green Street and Wright Street is known as the Alma Mater Plaza.
Lorado Taft wrote in correspondence that he began sculpting on the theme of "Labor and Learning" while home from Paris in 1883, after having graduated from the University of Illinois in 1879. Taft envisioned a sculpture that students would climb on and, indeed, climbing on the statue and sitting on the throne have become campus traditions.
The 1883 piece was a relief with just two figures and was not preserved. He began to seek funding for the project in 1916, a year after Daniel Chester French's Alma Mater was unveiled at Columbia University. Taft was familiar with French's reserved, seated Alma Mater treatment and desired to create a more generous and "cordial" figure suitable for a Midwest mother." He began to correspond that year about the work, writing of it on a grand scale and in terms of the figures in position, pose and dress. The central matriarch would stand "at least twelve feet high" and risen from her throne, advancing a step with outstretched arms, "a gesture of generously greeting her children." On the theme of the motto, he would pose two more figures on the same scale yet subordinate. He based Learning on Lemnia Athena as an heraldic gesture, clasping hands with a sturdy figure of Labor over the back of the chair. The subordination of figures was accomplished by sculpting them "with less accent" so as to make them appear "out of focus." According to financier Roland R. Conklin, an alumnus of the class of 1880, an initial completion date of October, 1918 was pushed back due to Taft's other commissions. Having secured the necessary patronage, Taft and Conklin announced the gift on November 27, 1916. The plaster cast was presented at the annual convocation of the Alumni Association at 3:00 PM on June 13, 1922. So although the plaque beneath has stated the statue was conceived in 1922, it was nearly half a century in the making.
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