Stephen Foster (sculpture)
| Stephen Foster | |
|---|---|
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| Artist | Giuseppe Moretti |
| Year | 1900 |
| Type | Sculpture |
| Location | Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S. |
Coordinates: 40°26′36″N 79°57′06″W / 40.443427°N 79.951782°W
Stephen Foster is a landmark public sculpture in bronze by Giuseppe Moretti on Schenley Plaza in the Oakland section of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Sited along Forbes Avenue near the entrance of Carnegie Museum of Natural History, in the shadow of Dippy, a life-size sculpture of a Diplodocus dinosaur, and in close proximity to the University of Pittsburgh's Stephen Foster Memorial, the Foster statue is one of the city's best known and most controversial.
The work of art is composed of two figures: a seated Stephen Collins Foster, the famous Pittsburgh-born songwriter with a notebook in hand, catching inspiration from a Negro slave at his feet strumming a banjo. The sculpture's pedestal is four feet, three inches, and the figures measure ten feet.
Stephen Foster was first erected in 1900 in the city's Highland Park, where Moretti had recently completed grand neoclassical gates for the park's main entrance. An economic depression in the 1890s, however, caused the Pittsburgh Press to head a subscription drive to garner funds for the piece. Nearly 50,000 Pittsburghers lined the parade route for the statue's dedication. Victor Herbert, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra's new music director, led 3,000 school children in the singing of Foster tunes. At the ceremony Stephen Foster's daughter Marion Foster Welch unveiled the statue and nieces of U.S. President James Buchanan laid a wreath at its base.
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